Re: GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project

[David Golden]

On Saturday 22 December 2001 12:55, Philippe C.D. Robert wrote:
> This is exactly one of the reasons IMHO why GNU will never succeed, why it
> is doomed to fail - like all other 'extreme' ways of dealing with
> realities. This is a very poor move. I am deeply disappointed.
>

I'd have to say the poor move was accepting the donation in the first place 
(even poorer if the donation was sought after) - particularly given the 
existence of plex86.   I don't regard the GNU project position as 
particularly "extreme" in software licensing - the extreme ones are the 
proprietary software corporations who are fighting  to make things like 
restrictive EULAs (which are not simply based on copyright laws, unlike the 
GPL) fully enforceable worldwide.  The GPL doesn't require new laws, their 
position does.

I certainly don't think GNU is doomed to fail.  After all, it's shown 
slow-and-steady growth for years, unlike the flash-in-the-pan fly-by-nights 
in the bulk of the proprietary world.

And anyway, it's a common trick in debating and law to take  a _really_ 
extreme position to soften the blow of a slightly less extreme one - things 
like the SSSCA are softening people up so they may even be happy about letting
a slightly less draconian, but still really bad, thing through - So, if 
anything, given the new pulls on the pendulum from the "opposing side"* to 
the FSF, we should expect the formation of a much more extreme organisation 
than the FSF, but pulling the pendulum on the "same side", perhaps one 
calling for mandated "Total Freedom of Information", calling for new laws in 
which is is a civil offense to withhold any pattern of information from 
anyone, using a similar line of reasoning about software to the one David 
Brin uses about personal informations in "The Transparent Society - Will 
Technology Force use to choose between Privacy and Freedom" (no, this is NOT 
the same as the Big Brother scenario - see 
http://www.kirthrup.com/brin/tschp1.html)

This of course, leads to an escalation of sillyness, but hey, that's life... 

* I've put these in quotation marks becasue the software licensing issue 
isn't really a 1-D spectrum.