Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com>]

This email spoke much about "forcing". To me, forcing is almost always 
compulsion. That's not really what Reiser or Debian can do to each 
other. The only thing I see that can be compelled is for Debian not to 
distribute Reiser's software at all, if it goes under totally 
no-copying terms.

On 2004-05-02 22:02:38 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:

> Who the hell do you think you are to use market leveraging to force 
> developers to use licenses they don't want that leave them exposed to 
> dangers 
> that endanger them not you?

Who the hell are you to use market leveraging to try to force 
developers to accept licences they don't want that leave their users 
exposed to dangers that endanger them not you?

Really, these linguistic pyrotechnics help no-one.

If you want big invariant adverts required by your copyright licence, 
go ahead. We will not force you to do otherwise, but you cannot force 
us to distribute your software. You could try to persuade us, but 
you've really not done well at that so far. Maybe we've not done well 
at persuading you, but I doubt you had an open mind at the start of 
this discussion, as you already picked that licence for some reason.

I shudder to think how much money-worth has been put into developing 
debian. Trying to intimidate us with the size of your wad seems 
unlikely to work.

> You are trying to create a new rigid orthodoxy to close off license 
> experimentation (long before we have licenses that work well), and 
> like most 
> groups who create such orthodoxies, you are eager to oppress those 
> who do not 
> conform to things you do not deeply understand.

Licence experimentation is cool and froody, but debian should be free 
to make its mind up about what is acceptable to it. They're getting 
quite practised at it now.

I don't want to oppress you. However, you are eager to oppress 
debian's users.

> I hope the FSF sticks to the GFDL and eventually makes GPL V3 
> resemble it. 

I hope they don't.

>> Surely there is! If we (or RedHat) were to do such a thing, our very
>> users and developers would be quite vocal about it, and rightly so.
> They did it and nothing happened to them (except of course that 
> XFree86 4.0 
> changed its license, which is the only way developers can effectively 
> respond 
> to such conduct).

OK, so say RedHat did bad. I don't use RedHat for years, which is the 
only way users can effectively respond. I plan to stop using XFree86 
because of its dumb developers who won't answer simple questions about 
the licence. I already don't use ReiserFS any more.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing