Why not GNU cmp?

[Chad Perrin]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 01:50:13PM +0200, Ross Cameron wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 08:34:50AM +0100, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> >
> > > You are asking the wrong questions: why did GNU write their own version
> > > of cmp?  FreeBSD's dates to 1987.
> >
> > Y'know -- that's a really good question.
> >
> 
> Not really its quite simple,... much like the *BSD camp prefers all their
> tools to be BSD licensed, the GNU camp want all their tools to be GPL
> licensed.
>     They have their reason's for wanting to enforce the sharing of code
> improvements.

You don't have to rewrite something BSD-licensed to distribute it under
the GPL, though.  Just wrap it in a larger package with a GPL license
over the whole thing, and contribute development effort to the BSD
licensed code if you want it to improve.  That would have been a win for
everyone, as far as I can tell -- rather than trying to enforce sharing
code improvements by rewriting something from scratch and distributing it
under a license that prevents its code from being shared with the BSD
licensed version.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ content licensed PDL: http://pdl.apotheon.org ]
Rudy Giuliani: "You have free speech so I can be heard."
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 195 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20080925/830983cf/attachment.pgp