Re: [school-discuss] GNU/Linux issue, please bury

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed@reedmedia.net>]

On Tue, 7 May 2002, Leon Brooks wrote:

> The rest of the article discusses open source a lot, which is good. I would
> rather discuss GPL, since IMESHO the GPL licence is truly open source, BSD
> etc are essentially giftware and so not guaranteed to *remain* open or even
> be acknowledged (Microsoft demonstrated that, only their very recent products

BSD licensed code is guaranteed to remain open (as long as the original
code is available).

> give anything like a wholehearted acknowledgement of their contributors). BSD
> is still *much* better than proprietary, and in a limited range of
> circumstances it's more appropriate than GPL. It's also important to make the

I would say that the GPL is the one that has the very limited range of
circumstances where it is more appropriate than BSDL.

> point that the GPL is the *only* licencing scheme which seems to offend a
> certain convicted illegal monopolist.

The GPL offends many others too.

> GPL, however, is not _yet_ a good buzzword to use in general press releases.
> The purpose of a release is to attract attention, not to hammer every
> theological point out flat. Once that attention has been attracted, it can
> then be more closely steered. Even then, the GNU/Linux issue is something

Exactly.

> that should be introduced gently, not rammed down people's throats or used as
> a test of faith. God forbid that we should follow in the footprints of the
> Inquisition, even in principle.

The licensing arguments (and confusion) probably scare away some potential
interested users.

> I personally use the term Linux+GNU since it more accurately conveys what's
> going on. Debian are getting set to distribute a FreeBSD with a GNU toolset.
> Is the term GNU/FreeBSD appropariate there, or confusing?

Yes, confusing. Debian BSD is appropriate, highlighting the "Debian"
because it uses the Debian philosophy and dpkg and friends. (Also, NetBSD
kernel and NetBSD kernel-specific userland tools are used with the Debian
BSD project.)

> I hope this is sufficient to show the naysayers why I'm not _yet_ interested
> in highlighting the term for a press release.

Thanks again for your work on the release.

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://www.reedmedia.net/