[Asterisk-Users] Re: Digium Website Update: Asterisk Business Edition

[trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com]

On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 12:44 -0400, Andrew Kohlsmith wrote:
> On Saturday 11 June 2005 12:12, Esben Stien wrote:
> > It means the project will receive less contribution from free software
> > developers. I certainly would not give up my copyright on free
> > software so that someone else could release it as non free software.
> 
> Only to those who agree with your views.  While I will *NOT* say we've got 
> enough contributors, I can say that we're doing pretty good with the people 
> who agree with their policies thus far.  (We == the asterisk community)
> 

Further his point seems to be anti BSD license.  If I write software and
give it away free what difference does it make to me if someone sells
it.  They still have to find someone who is willing to pay for it when
they could get it from me for free.  Because I chose to give it up for
free I would not have any expectation of profiting off it.  As long as
credit is given I dont see any reason people would freak out that
someone is selling something you give away for free.  Unless of course
its envy, that you did the work but couldnt find a way to sell it and
someone else did.  

I find people are often against anyone making any sort of profit on
anything, read the archives where people freaked that people were
selling preconfigured asterisk boxes.  How dare they provide hardware,
configuration support, and who knows maybe even telephone tech support,
and they were *gasp* charging for all of that.

I see this whole argument (which acutally comes up a lot when you are
discussing different licenses) as futile.  There are those that are all
fore freedom, the freedom to choose the freedom to do what you want with
the software, and others who want to hold people to a restrictive
license and remove choices.  I personally choose to exercise my freedom
and give others more freedom in what they do with my software.  

If someone who started development on a project wants to exercise their
freedom and choose a license different than what I would have chosen I
respect that choice.  However I personally wont release anything under
the GPL because I feel that its too restrictive on what others can do
with what I write, why I prefer the BSD style license, it gives people
more choice, more freedom.


> > This is not really what he says. He's worried about his free software
> > contribution being offered to third parties as non free
> > software. Money is not an issue here.
> 
> That's why Digium requires your code to be disclaimed.  If you don't agree, 
> you don't disclaim and your code stays out of the dual-licensed software and 
> everyone's happy.
> 

Ahh so they are all about individual choice instead of forcing everyone
else to be assimilated into one way of thinking.  Interesting concept,
this freedom and choice thing.  Being American I am unaccustomed to such
freedoms and choices.  My head begins to spin with the concept!


-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
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