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Though I can’t stand Ulrich Drepper, what he said in the glibc 2.2.4 release notes is true: “The morale of this is that people will hopefully realize what a co

Though I can’t stand Ulrich Drepper, what he said in the glibc 2.2.4 release notes is true: “The morale of this is that people will hopefully realize what a control freak and raging manic Stallman is. Don't trust him. As soon as something isn't in line with his view he'll stab you in the back. NEVER voluntarily put a project you work on under the GNU umbrella since this means in Stallman's opinion that he has the right to make decisions for the project.” https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-announce/2001/msg00000.html https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-announce/2001/msg00000.html

peterwwillis 9y ago
This part has a morale, too, and it is almost the same: don't trust this person. Read the licenses carefully and rip out parts which give Stallman any possibility to influence your future. Phrases like [...] GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. just invites him to screw you when it pleases him. Rip out the "any later version" part and make your own decisions when to use a different license since otherwise he can potentially do you or your work harm. I never noticed this before. Whether it was intentionally conspiratorial or not, it's certainly an important legal and organizational consideration.
- erik_seaberg 9y ago
  The legal landscape changes, if slowly. You have to decide up front who has the right to update the license, because otherwise with mixed copyright holders the answer is "nobody, ever".
- eesmith 9y ago
  It was what enabled the compatibility with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license that the Wikimedia Foundation used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License#Compatibility_with_Creative_Commons_licensing_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License... It could seemingly be used for malice, eg, if there's a hostile takeover of the FSF and the new owners change the license. However, the copyright contribution agreement that people make with the FSF essentially contractually promises that the contributions will only be used for free software, making that scenario impossible.

peterwwillis 9y ago

This part has a morale, too, and it is almost the same: don't trust this person. Read the licenses carefully and rip out parts which give Stallman any possibility to influence your future. Phrases like [...] GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. just invites him to screw you when it pleases him. Rip out the "any later version" part and make your own decisions when to use a different license since otherwise he can potentially do you or your work harm. I never noticed this before. Whether it was intentionally conspiratorial or not, it's certainly an important legal and organizational consideration.

erik_seaberg 9y ago
The legal landscape changes, if slowly. You have to decide up front who has the right to update the license, because otherwise with mixed copyright holders the answer is "nobody, ever".
eesmith 9y ago
It was what enabled the compatibility with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license that the Wikimedia Foundation used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License#Compatibility_with_Creative_Commons_licensing_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License... It could seemingly be used for malice, eg, if there's a hostile takeover of the FSF and the new owners change the license. However, the copyright contribution agreement that people make with the FSF essentially contractually promises that the contributions will only be used for free software, making that scenario impossible.