Re: [gentoo-user] CD ROM does not play audio CD's

[Joerg.Schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (Joerg Schilling)]

Sebastian Günther <samson@guenther-roetgen.de> wrote:

> > Unfortunately the GPL has not been written in an unambiguous way. This is
> > why the OSI rated the GPL as non-free for several years. Some years ago, the
> > FSF explained that the GPL needs to be interpreted in a way that makes it
> > compliant to the rules at http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
> > 
>
> And that is the bottom of the line in this whole elaborate discussion:
> The definition of freedom.
>
> I *like* the GPL because of that "You have all the freedom, exept to cut 
> down this freedom"-attitude. It is like: I am a tolerant person, but not 
> to intolerant people. And as another example: The german constitution 
> also prohibits the change of the articles that guarantee human rights.

You seem to have a major missunderstanding with the background ot the 
constitution. The constitution has not been written to save the constitution
while ignoring possible harm to the people. The constitution does not give 
asymmetric rights to parts of the whole population only.

The GPL however limits the usability of OpenSource as OSS and claims this
is in order to save OSS. The GPL allows GPLd software to use any kind of 
software but disallows other OpenSource Software to use GPLd software.

Another big problem with the GPL is that the Free Software Foundation does not 
care about leality in own projects. There are at least two official FSF 
projects that did ilegally change the license of the code they use from other 
projects. libcdio did change code taken from cdrtools from GPLv2-only to 
GPLv2-or-any-later and vcdimager publishes code under GPL that never has been 
put under GPL by the author.



> And if I wrote software, I would not want people to reuse the codeit in 
> closed  source. So GPL is the right choice for me, because of the viral 
> and supposed non-free issue.

If you like this, you do not need to forbid to use the software for other OSS
as done by the GPL. 
 

> But remember, if more people contibute to a software project, then the 
> license is some essential part of the collaboration. Changing it 
> requires the consensus of *all* people who *ever* contributed to it.

You are obviously uninformed about legal facts. In Europe as well as in the 
USA, "minor contributors" are not given the right to decide on this.

> So changing a license is always cumbersome.

Then you should be against the GPL as many GPL people take BSD code 
and illegally add GPL tags. This may be tolerated by the authors but it is 
still forbidden by law.

Jörg

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