Re: GPLv3 comedy unfolding -- Linus' "standing"

[Alexander Terekhov]

(That's what Wallace is lacking according to (drunken in a sense) 
federal judges Tinder and Young.)

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DRM "Misunderstood"
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 28 2006 @ 02:11 AM EDT

I explain the emotions, because the legal part of the GPLv3 makes no
sense what-so-ever if you don't understand what is driving the changes.

The whole notion that "Tivo is bad" is idiotic. It's the exact same
argument as "proprietary software is bad", and it's wrong. It's the
stupid FSF agenda that it's about "us vs them", which has never been
true.

Proprietary software does not take anything away from open source. The
fact that windows exists, and is proprietary, is totally and utterly
irrelevant from an open source angle. The proprietary people are not
evil, they are just misguided. They think that they can compete better
by keeping secrets, and they are wrong.

The whole point of open source is that we can do better than that, and
that we can do so exactly because we can work on each others work - not
on the work of the proprietary people. We don't need them, but they are
also not our enemies.

But more importantly, it is their choice to not believe us. It's not our
place to force our beliefs down their throat - if we cannot show that we
can do better software than they can do, then what the hell is the point
of it all?

And the exact same thing is true of proprietary hardware. Tivo isn't the
enemy. If you don't like their closed hardware, just don't buy it. Make
your own. See the exact same logic as with proprietary software? If you
don't like proprietary software, nobody forces you to use it or buy it,
and you can help the people that do alternatives.

I realize that a lot of people see this as a fight. But I tell you,
those people are missing the point. We're not fighting. At least the
useful people aren't fighting. No good code ever comes out of people who
do things because they are afraid, or because they hate. And I'm not
just sayign that because it sounds good - it's really true. If you make
your choices because you fear somebody, you'll make the wrong choices.

Look at all the idiotic choices that Sun has made wrt Java and other
things. A lot of them seem to be directly a result not of trying to do
the right thing to their custimer, but because of fear and loathing of
their competition. The whole choice of their licenses seem to not be
about trying to make the best technical choice, but from fear of others
- both Microsoft and Linux.

And I'm sorry, but I refuse to be that stupid.

So it all boils down to this: do you want to use a license that is for
something good (GPLv2), or one that is against something bad? And I
claim that having your guiding principle to be against something else is
not just insufferably stupid, it's also a sure way to make your own life
miserable.

I think the GPLv2 is a very positive license. It's about the positive
belief that together, you can make something better.

In contrast, every single big and fundamental addition to the GPLv3 is
about hate and fear. What used to be a "quid pro quo" has been turned
into a weapon. And that is not just sad, it is counter-productive. The
FSF seems to be actively trying to turn this into a fight, when most of
the entities involved don't want to fight at all.

And yes, I realize that they saw the GPLv2 as a holy crusade too, and if
you have that mindset, the new GPLv3 just makes sense in a "let's
escalate the fight" kind of sense. Me, I just never believed in that
whole FSF idiocy.

And take it from me, the FSF has been acting idiotic for the last
decade. Why do you think it's called "Open Source" in the first place?
Exactly because the FSF has made a dirty word out of "Freedom".

And hey, if people cannot see that, it's their problem. I've tried to
explain my standpoint, but in the end I can just say that hey, it's my
choice. And I've talked to a lot of kernel engineers, and quite frankly,
it's pretty damn unanimous. The people who are spoiling for a fight are
not the people who are actually getting things done.

I think I've explained about as much as I'm likely to be able to
explain. If people can't see what's wrong with the FSF, me standing on a
soap-box won't help you.
Linus
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regards,
alexander.