Licensing question

[Huaiyu Zhu]

Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
>
>The emotional difference is that Richard Stallman tells me that
>dealing with Bill Gates is equivalent to selling myself into slavery,
>and that Stallman is imposing the restrictions for my own good, and/or
>the moral good.  No doubt I personally consider the GPL deal far more
>advantageous---but please leave that judgement up to me!  There are
>exceptions, and they are important to me.

I agree with the majority of what you wrote in other paragraphs.  And I
enjoy most of your writings.  But I have a problem with this paragraph.
Most people deciding whether to use MS products do not base their
consideration on BG's motivation.  I think it would also be better to
consider GPL software without regarding to RMS's motivation, more so because
most GPL'ed software are not owned by FSF.

Whenever possible I avoid questioning people's motivation.  I prefer to
study the consequence of their actions instead.  I think a technical forum
would be healthier if people try to talk about things instead of persons,
esp when making negative comments.

On the other hand, warnings like "If you adopt .NET now, you will find
yourself trapped in five year" is of a completely different nature from
accusations like "BG wants to rule the world".  I have no problem at all
with people saying "If you use a GPL'ed version of something you'll find
troubles down the road", even when it is untrue.  Claims about consequences
of actions can be examined and refuted if necessary.

Now to the particular issue you have with RMS.  He might be advocating his
cause more than you like, or in ways that offend you, but since he has never
been advocating GPL in this group, it might be better for the complaints to
go elsewhere as well, such as gnu.misc.

In fact, almost all discussions about RMS here in the past few months, pro
and con, were prompted by unfounded accusations about GPL, FSF or RMS.  If
people don't want to talk about these issues here, then please don't talk
about them.

Huaiyu