Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

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

On 2004-04-30 17:26:50 +0100 Michael Milverton 
<camel78@iprimus.com.au> wrote:

> I read this as meaning the following. Nobody is allowed to take the 
> product 
> that we produce and rename it into something else, thereby making it 
> look as 
> though it really belongs to someone else.

You just ignored the bit where he forbids supression of the "credits" 
banner? Although you might be able to argue for some form of this, it 
is clearly more restrictive than what is written in the GPL.

> and it is these people who are going against the spirit of the GPL. 
> What is 
> the point of having the code copyrighted to Hans Reiser in the source 
> code 
> when all the end user gets to see is that this software is called 
> company X.

It's a problem of degrees. Reasonable attribution is fine, but if 
every command run in boot scrips output a screen of credits, just the 
scrolling display would add considerably to the time and go past too 
quick for anyone to read anything, for example. What is the point of 
having the program attributed to Hans Reiser when all the end user 
gets to see is a blur, or becomes used to skipping these messages?

> I think people need to be more sensitive to the feelings of people 
> that put 
> such a huge amount of heart and soul into their software and not be 
> so quick 
> in dismissing their concerns. [...]

I agree with this. I think the same consideration should be given to 
the debian developers. This whole feud seems to have started because a 
debian package maintainer responded to a bug report from a debian user 
and then they were accused of plagiarism in a confrontational 
response. Not really a sinister plot to steal Hans Reiser's work.

-- 
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