Charles Hannum says NetBSD is dead

[Brunellus]

It's all very well to talk about "spirit."

Spirit is irrelevant. If you were worried about spirit, you should have stated your aims explicitly in the license under whose terms you release your software.

Call me ungrateful, or hard, or mean-spirited, but I honestly think the community should grow up and start thinking about things like law, rather than get all upset and talk about fuzzy, indistinct, and undefinable things like "spirit."

I personally wish the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects all the best in the world; but they're grown-ups like the rest of us, and have to live with the consequences of their license.

[mips]

I do not think spirit is irrelevant. If we all simply conformed to the laws we would be a bunch of pretty mean people. "Oh, you wan't a donation for the Salvation Army ? Get lost as the law does not require me to donate"

[Brunellus]

I do not think spirit is irrelevant. If we all simply conformed to the laws we would be a bunch of pretty mean people. "Oh, you wan't a donation for the Salvation Army ? Get lost as the law does not require me to donate"

What I mean is this:

The "community" stands ready to denounce anything that it perceives to be not "in the spirit" of Linux/Ubuntu/Free Software/peace/happiness/harmony/brotherhood (delete as appropriate). I think that's all well and good. You can believe what you want to believe. But at the end of the day, what counts are the things that you can make happen, not the things that you'd like to believe.

If we relied entirely on 'spirit,' software licensing would be superfluous. Software would be offered in the public domain, the original developer's "intent" would be known, and everyone would happily follow that.

But nothing in such a system prevents exploitation by people who don't share that "spirit" for their own profit. What DOES prevent it is the coercive power of the law--in this case, licensing.

I am not saying that you shouldn't be a nice person, or that you shouldn't do good things of your own accord. But in software as in real life, you cannot expect to go through life expecting that everybody else is going to be nice to you. It's not going to happen. Bottom line: you can't rely on spirit for anything. Force is always reliable, and for us, that force is the force of the law through the license of the software.

[SoundMachine]

It's all very well to talk about "spirit."

Spirit is irrelevant. If you were worried about spirit, you should have stated your aims explicitly in the license under whose terms you release your software.

Well that is only leading to one thing, less free software, FLOSS works only and i do mean ONLY because people do things to help others or to help themselves.

Call me ungrateful, or hard, or mean-spirited, but I honestly think the community should grow up and start thinking about things like law, rather than get all upset and talk about fuzzy, indistinct, and undefinable things like "spirit."

Call me a bleeding heart but i think that what is good for the developer is good for those who use it, supporting it instead of ignoring them is something that has kept more than one project alive that we all use and benefit from today.

I personally wish the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects all the best in the world; but they're grown-ups like the rest of us, and have to live with the consequences of their license.

Great, stop using their software and you can ignore the future development of it, in the meantime people like Patrick V who barely has money to stay online and the Mozilla project are carrying it.

Good for you, you can still use it, any security hole will still be patched and you don't have to care.

I'm not saying that anyone HAS to care, i'm just saying that any intelligent distro distributor SHOULD since if it stops being developed, well, what do you know that would suffice? I know of one system, that is in Vista, i don't know of ANY system that is even close that is FLOSS.

[SoundMachine]

What I mean is this:

The "community" stands ready to denounce anything that it perceives to be not "in the spirit" of Linux/Ubuntu/Free Software/peace/happiness/harmony/brotherhood (delete as appropriate). I think that's all well and good. You can believe what you want to believe. But at the end of the day, what counts are the things that you can make happen, not the things that you'd like to believe.

If we relied entirely on 'spirit,' software licensing would be superfluous. Software would be offered in the public domain, the original developer's "intent" would be known, and everyone would happily follow that.

But nothing in such a system prevents exploitation by people who don't share that "spirit" for their own profit. What DOES prevent it is the coercive power of the law--in this case, licensing.

I am not saying that you shouldn't be a nice person, or that you shouldn't do good things of your own accord. But in software as in real life, you cannot expect to go through life expecting that everybody else is going to be nice to you. It's not going to happen. Bottom line: you can't rely on spirit for anything. Force is always reliable, and for us, that force is the force of the law through the license of the software.

Basically what you are saying is "if you expect to get help when you are hurting and every distro and millions of people are using your work, don't expect it if you are using a free license, the only way to make it is to keep it closed source"

That is real nice and what do i know, may even be true in the long run, but i'm asking you, what are you doing here if that is what you believe?

[Brunellus]

Basically what you are saying is "if you expect to get help when you are hurting and every distro and millions of people are using your work, don't expect it if you are using a free license, the only way to make it is to keep it closed source"

That is real nice and what do i know, may even be true in the long run, but i'm asking you, what are you doing here if that is what you believe?

No, that is not what I'm saying at all.

What I am saying is that merely trusting in "spirit," that is to say the voluntary goodwill of other strangers, to keep software free is hopeless. Once upon a time, Microsoft needed a TCP/IP stack. They took a good, free one, available for use under an early BSD license. They complied with the license to the letter, and have not redistributed the source code for that critical component.

Sentimentalists in the community might cry foul. How DARE an EVIL corporation TAKE code which was FREELY-PROVIDED and not give back! They can howl in protest insist that Bill & Steve give back to the community. Bill & Steve shrug: Make us.

What recourse does "the community" have? Without a robust license and legal enforcement for the same, they have no way to compel "evildoers" to comply.

Spirit is all well and good at encouraging people. Let there be spirit everywhere, I say. But spirit has a terrible record at compelling people to do your will, and that is precisely what the free software movement and the GPL is seeking to achieve.

Sentimentality only achieves so much.