RMS says: "Use BSD, for goodness sake!"

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Brett Glass <brett at lariat.org> writes:

> At 11:24 AM 6/27/2003, Gary W. Swearingen wrote:
  
> >Thank you for using "if".  As much as I dislike copyleft, it's clear
> >(from this thread alone) that moving to a no-copyleft FreeBSD should not
> >be a goal.

> Why do you draw this conclusion? My conclusion, after reading this thread,
> is that FreeBSD must act NOW to remove as much GPLed code as possible
> (hopefully, every shred of it). FreeBSD is now so dangerously dependent 
> upon GPLed software that it soon will no longer be able to fufill its role
> as a source of truly free code. 

"Why?"  That's an odd question to ask in response to a message that was
written to explain why.  Oh well.  But I could ask you the same
question, since you didn't even bother to TRY explain your conclusion,
or why mine is wrong.  But I couldn't expect a reasonable reply.  :(

> This is, of course, one of Stallman's goals: to infiltrate both truly free 
> and commercial software to the point where no operating system and no 
> software product is independent of the FSF's software. And FreeBSD is 
> falling for the ruse.

The need to be independent of FSF (or any other badly licensed code) is
not the most (or even a very) important thing for the future of FreeBSD.
It can find itself with few users in the tiniest of niches with nothing
but well-licensed code.  No, FreeBSD needs to continue to be a great OS,
with as much well-licensed code as can be afforded while keeping the OS
great.  That can best be done with a fair amount of badly-licensed code,
especially code for utilities (which should be as standardized as
possible anyway), as long as people keep writing lots of well-licensed
code.  Let the copyleft guild do some of FreeBSD's dirty work, like
"awk", "sort", and other things for which there is no great need to have
a customized version.  For another example, I sure don't expect to get
much use from a well-licensed editor while (X)emacs is around.  There's
plenty of other FreeBSD software to be developed under a good license.

> YES, we absolutely do need to bring older code up to date -- or even 
> re-program the wheel if necessary. To insist upon blind forward "progress"
> while the enemy is in fact nipping at our flanks is to ensure defeat. 
> The price of not standing up for principle now will be to lose our very 
> REAL freedom in exchange for Stallman's false "freedom."

More unsubstantiated statements.  Anybody who thinks they need the
freedom to modify a "tar" version under a good license, should be
discouraged from doing so, but they always have the freedom to do as
they please without expending the efforts of FreeBSD developers.

There's no defeat to be found in using some external open source
software in FreeBSD, even if it can't be modified at all.  Can't you
think of improvements that you'd rather have than some BSD-unique
feature of "tar", etc.?