Re: "proprietary", was Re: ada on linux

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <CQH_4.1477$C02.345830@news.pacbell.net>,
  tmoran@bix.com wrote:
>  While legal, adding significant value to one's
> proprietary product by copying/including something BSDed,
> without its
> author's permission, is usually considered unethical.

This is complete nonsense. If the author releases something
under the BSD, they are giving you *EXPLICIT* permission to
"add significant value ...", and there is absolutely NOTHING
unethical, inappropriate, or even unexpected about such
action. The whole idea of the BSD license is to give such
permission, and there are definitely authors who feel this
is appropriate and is what they want, and that is why they
use the license.

If an author wants to be asked for permission for such actions,
then they should not use the BSD license, it is as simple as
that.

> So saying that all
> people who object to the GPL would prefer the BSD like license
because
> then they would be able to use the software, without it's
author's
> permission, in their proprietary products, is saying that all
people who
> object to the GPL do so because they wish to engage in that
kind of
> unethical behavior.

Except that it is not unethical except in your confused
thinking.

> That is false.  There are many people who are not in
> fact interested in stealing other people's software,

To think that using BSD software in this way is stealing is
completely absurd, and actually really rather inappropriate.
You are accusing people of a crime, where there is no crime,
just misunderstanding on your part.

Really Tom, if you are going to make such pronouncements,
you must make more effort to understand how copyright
and licensing works!

> but still believe the
> GPL and its associated rhetoric very often have very negative
> consequences for both developers and users.

What "very negative consequences"? Developers use this license
if that's how they want to license their software, users acquire
the software if they find the license conditions acceptable.
This is the same situation as for any other licensed software.

The only negative consequence is that a particular user or
developer finds that they cannot make use of the software under
some situation because the license is unsuitable. Fine, go find
another product, that's what competition is about!





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