>However, unlike biological viruses, it's YOUR decision if you want to
catch this virus.

I think the other point was that at the time of this code being widely
absorbed into the commercial codebase there was a general
misunderstanding of the intention of the 'free software'. At the time of
the absorbtion of the code I don't think the DECISION was as widely
understood as it is now becoming more clear. You only need to consider
the complexity of the debate on this list to forgive early adoptors of
these cleverly written licenses that the impact of their DECISION to
adopt such code has had unexpected and poorly understood consequences. I
mean sure it was written into the license 'agreement' but so were the
words FREE! Only now these licenses are starting to be tested in court
is the actual DECISION being clarified and retrospectively it is having
distruptive consquences.. Sounds like all the hallmarks of a trogan
horse in addition to that of a virus.. A very clever strategy indeed.

Let me clarify my personal position. I am in no way and by no means
against open-source software, in fact an advocate, but the nature of
some of the 'clever' licences is all a bit too clever for me. There is
no doubt that huge open-source libraries is of enourmous benefit - look
at suns open-source java model for example. You can look and see and
learn and extend from opensource code.. And if you get enough value from
it you can put back into the system.. Now that's what sharing is
supposed to be about :-)

The key point is, 'as intended'.. If people want to develop code and
give it away for free that's fantastic and they should have no concern
who uses it and for what purpose ( some good examples earlier on
Microchip released code and others ) but deserve of course credit and
glory where appropriate. However if people are developing code and
giving it away for free with the intention or hope of being disruptive
(#PC Alert - yes this is a generalisation) then this is as bad as anyone
else out there attempting to be disruptive. The question really is..
What purpose does the GPL license have other than to be intentionally
disruptive? Perhaps there is a very good answer for that, and I don't
buy into that whole pay it forward argument.. Although a good one ;-) ,
but from many perspectives it appears intentionally distruptive ( and
the consequences certainly seem to be) so then you must ask, what are
the legalities of an intentionally disruptive paragidm? IMHO (The deeper
issue is that it is frustratingly difficult to be rewarded for your
efforts (despite your obvious brilliance) in this highly competitive
deeply entrenched electronic jungle and there are all these evil
software companies making all this money doing stuff you could do in a
weekend.. Right? .. It's not fair.. Right?.. Sounds like a motive to
me.. But that's another story.. For now Build-A-Bridge ;-) )

Let people develop for free, let them gain glory, let them get their
names in build releases, but don't let them get their glory by putting
legal trogan horses in commercial software and then let their names go
up in lights as they torpedo the commercial efforts of business
enterprises based on the subtleties of what the legal meaning of 'free'
really is..

In the end the whole thing will fizzle out (eventually) because GPL etc
will simply be Immune Responsed out of consideration.. Eventually your
free code will just sit there with I'ts RED STIPES because no-one will
take any interest in it until you change your license.. And that's just
no fun now is it.  Besides someone else who is prepared to change their
license to a newer more evolved license that will probably come from all
this, maybe the license model that Wouter is looking for, will have
their free software available for download with attached glory and
whatever constitutes the revised agreement. That's the true beauty of
this.. Its an evolutionary process through and through and discussions
like this are in fact the survival-of-the-fittest selection process
bringing forward all the excellent questions and thoughts raised by this
list of what in fact Capital is and what rights are and who is allowed
to do what etc... Maybe there just isn't an answer from our current
models and something new will be invented to address it.. Now THAT would
be exciting :-)

But for now it has runnaway a little, like any new virus will, it's not
a catastrophy or anything, it's hardly a hickup really in the scheme of
things but it does give us all a reason to express some philosophy which
makes for nice change of pace :-)

Cheers all and thanks for the time to read the ramble.

James Caska
www.muvium.com
uVM - 'Java Bred for Embedded'



-----Original Message-----
From: pic microcontroller discussion list
[mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of Bill Couture
Sent: Tuesday, 27 January 2004 10:51 PM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: [OT:] SCO lobbying Congress about Linux


On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, James Caska wrote:

> >Please be precise in your flames -
>
> What if you are not trying to flame :-) I was deliberately avoiding
> specifics and the whole thrust of the line of thought was simply an
> observation about the biological similarities of (some) OpenSource
> licenses and virus's..

However, unlike biological viruses, it's YOUR decision if you want to
catch this virus.

If you don't like the license terms of the code, just don't use it.

Bill

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