🚀 go-pugleaf

On 12 Apr 1998 21:35:23 -0400, Frank Sweetser <rasmusin@WPI.EDU> posted:
>psmith@baynetworks.com (Paul D. Smith) writes:
>
>> %% oli@flinx.sub.org (Oliver Schwank) writes:
>> 
>>   >> as anyone else.  Anyone could take this same code and make a non-free
>>   >> commercial product from it.  Many have.  What do you think runs inside
>>   >> most X-terminals??  A small unix-based kernel and X11 I would guess.
>> 
>>   os> so the mistake was to make XFree XFree and not XGPL 
>>   os> If XFree has been under GPL, TOG could burn in hell... 
>> 
>> I see statements like this quite often in this thread.
>> 
>> Please, everyone, _STOP_ saying this.  It isn't true.
>> 
>> TOG is the _copyright_owner_ of the X SI code.  They can do _ANYTHING_
>> they want with it, _regardless_ of what licenses it was released under
>> in the past.  Even if the X11 SI had been released under the GPL all
>> along, TOG could just as easily have changed the licensing of X11R6.4 in
>> the same way they did, or any other way they liked.
>> 
>> The GPL would absolutely not have helped here one little bit.
>
>actually it could have, potentially.  if those who contributed code to TOG
>had only released their contributions under GPL, then TOG could not put
>their current license on any packages which included those chunks of
>contributed code.
>
>		whether TOG would have allowed those GPL'd bits into their
>		code base is another story altogether...

And *THAT* is a crucial issue that is not an aside.

The FSF specifically wishes their mandate to be to make sure that code is
permanently "free," and receives code with that being the understanding
and the intent of the arrangement.

Were X to be distributed under the GPL, it is highly probable that 
TOG (or its equivalent) would require that contributed code be assigned
to TOG.  This would not necessarily deny the original author's copyright;
it would "merely" give TOG the same rights that the original author had.
Check the Netscape Public License for a GPL-like license that provides
this.  

Note that the FSF requires almost similar arrangements; they demand that
significant contributions of code come with a formal assignment of the
code to the FSF.  Their reasoning is quite different from Netscape's,
but the assignment is not entirely dissimilar.

Note also that not all organizations release code in order to make code
"free" due to the intentional ideal that "all software should be free."

The principles may be more "pragmatic" ones such as:

a) The rather common notion that it is useful for a "sample/reference
implementation" to be readily available.  (Certainly true for X; also for
various implementations of software to represent Internet protocols...)

b) The notion that it a "free" implementation allows the "marketplace"
to implement functionality that the originators can't.  (Netscape with
respect to the implementation of international versions that provide
strong crypto.)

c) The idea of "spoiling" a competitor's day when you conclude that
you can't actually make money from selling your product.  (Netscape and
Willows TWIN are likely examples of this.)

Different intents can result in different licenses, and while this
may not go along with one person's idealism, this doesn't make the
results necessarily "less free" or the outcomes "clearly inferior."
-- 
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. 	
-- Henry Spencer          <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
cbbrowne@hex.net - "What have you contributed to Linux today?..."