Re: an open letter to Geor

jbradford
2002-10-06T08:37:15Z

> A snippet of the Plan 9 license....

[snip]

That is, indeed, a quote from the current Plan 9 license.

You cut the paragraph a bit short though, and missed off the part that Richard Stallman argues excludes selling it for a profit, see:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html

infact, he makes a lot of valid comments on the current Plan 9 license, and concludes that it is not free software.

Whether you agree with Richard Stallman's definitions of free software and open source, is irrellevant. I certainly am _not_ saying that I do. The issues he raises, though, demonstrate that there are big differences between the Plan 9 license and the GPL and BSD licenses.

Don't get me wrong, I like Plan 9, but you are spreading mis-information, by continuing to imply that it is free in the same way as Linux is free.

You can find the _whole_ Plan 9 license here:

http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/license.html

> The Plan 9 License was modified to resemble the GPL around Jan 2000 or so,
> as was Kermit. I posted to linux-kernel on the matter at the time. These
> two events changed the open source landscape substantially.

I don't argue that. Plan 9 is open source software. What I am saying is that the license differs from the GPL and BSD licenses in a number of ways. Comparing it to Linux, BSD, Atheos, OpenVMS, etc, etc, is comparing Apples to Oranges.

John.