Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!odi!benson
From: benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Questions about "Free Software Foundation" (long)
Message-ID: <1989Oct2.151317.3789@odi.com>
Date: 2 Oct 89 15:13:17 GMT
References: <6602@thor.acc.stolaf.edu> <110004@gore.com> <2247@munnari.oz.au> <6702@thor.acc.stolaf.edu>
Reply-To: benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
Organization: Object Design Inc., Burlington, MA
Lines: 27

This conversation should serve as a warning to potential FSF software
users. Its quite typical. The FSF hangs a legal bowl of sphagetti off
of their source. Individuals, some of them trained lawyers, read this
item and find that it is at best ambiguous, and at worst seems to
impose all sorts of impossible conditions. Querying the FSF on this
point gets a progression of results:

1) we see no problem here. The Man Himself (stallman) has said many
times that his intention is to permit commercial use.

2) Oh, a statement in email of our intentions isn't good enough for
you?  You want some accompanying document to the copyleft, or an
improvement?  Well, even if there were a problem here, we aren't
interested in solving it, because it would just be facilitating
"software hoarding."

3) personal flames and attacks on the luckless soul who dared to
raise the question.

Note that the "intentions" of the FSF aren't the only relevant
intentions. The copyleft, as the originator of this chain, potentially
grants all kinds of rights to all sorts of others. One of them
might decide to be a nuisance.


-- 
Benson I. Margulies