Re: Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

["Callum Lerwick" <seg haxxed com>]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 5:42 PM, Matthew Saltzman <mjs clemson edu> wrote:

On Thu, 2008-06-19 at 17:04 -0400, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> Matthew Saltzman <mjs clemson edu> wrote:
> > Plenty of companies that would be willing to release free software are
> > leery of releasing it as GPL
>
> Why?

You'd have to ask their lawyers.  But it's a fact.

>
> >                              and of using GPL software.
>
> Now that is completely unwarranted.

You'd have to tell their lawyers.  But it's a fact.

As much as I hate to drag on this clusterfsck of zelotry any longer, I can't let this bullshit fly unopposed. Here, I'll stick to a concrete example:

Linden Lab is a small start-up, which may or may not even be pulling a profit yet, running off venture capital. They developed a closed-source virtual world, Second Life. A year ago they chose to release their client open source. What license did they choose? They chose the GPLv2. Think about it, if they had used a BSD-style license, some other company could take their code, start up their own for-profit service, and profit off Linden Lab's work without giving anything back, quite possibly putting Linden Lab out of business. Their investors would have never let that happen.

Without a license like the GPL, which ensures that derived works remain free, Linden Lab would have never open sourced the Second Life client. And that's a fact.