Re: [RFC] Linux Kernel Subversion Howto

James Bruce
2005-02-10T05:47:28Z

While I agree with your overall sentiment, please compare apples to
apples regarding the license. You said:

Larry McVoy wrote:
> I don't come here every month and ask for
> the GPL to be removed from some driver, that's essentially what you are
> doing and I think pretty much everyone is sick of it.

The GPL doesn't state that "You and anyone at your company are not
allowed to work on any operating system software under any non-GPL
license." While that would be a perfectly valid license (just like the
BK one), obviously it would generate a fairly steady stream of
complaints. It's not like people have stopped complaining about how the
GPL forces them to release any code they link with it. The boundary of
a license will always create friction. This will be especially true as
in the BK license, which was expressly designed to be irritating to a
certain class of people (who now whine about it).

A more directly relevant example would be the following: What if a new
version of CVS had a license with a clause stating the following: "Any
repository touched by CVS 1.2 may not be imported into into BK, unless
you first remove all checkin comments. This is because we don't help
people who are competing with us." Sure, that's a 100% legitimate
license, and binding due to standard copyright goodness, yet I would
expect BitMover people to complain about it. What we have now is
exactly the same thing in reverse. Get used to the complaints because
your license is achieving exactly what you meant it to do.

- Jim