Re: Rsync over ssh (pulling from Cygwin to Linux) stalls..

[mwoehlke <mwoehlke@tibco.com>]

Dave Korn wrote:
> On 14 August 2006 20:48, mwoehlke wrote:
>> Dave Korn wrote:
>>> On 14 August 2006 18:41, mwoehlke wrote:
>>>> Dave Korn wrote:
>>>>> On 14 August 2006 17:04, mwoehlke wrote:
>>>>>> My understanding is that if you place it in Public Domain, then anyone
>>>>>> can do anything with it and no one can stop this. IOW RedHat would be
>>>>>> safe because no one can prevent them from using Public Domain material
>>>>>> in any manner or fashion.
>>>>>   That's not what "safe" means.  If the program is in the public domain,
>>>>> rather than RH having the copyright assigned to them, then anyone could
>>>>> take it, make a proprietary version and distribute it without the
>>>>> sources, and RH would not be in a legal position to enforce the GPL on
>>>>> it because they would not be the copyright holder.
>>>> And the problem with this would be what, exactly? "Safe" in that no one
>>>> can take legal action against RH because of their use of it.
>>>   No, redhat is "safe" in /that/ sense automatically, because the code is
>>> GPLd and so they and everyone else in the world can do what they like with
>>> it, and nobody can stop them.  The meaning of "safe" for redhat would be
>>> "safe from anyone stealing it for proprietary use", because the code would
>>> not be safe against that unless someone who can afford lawyers - such as
>>> RH - holds the copyright.
>> ...I think this is what Daryl is taking issue with: you are essentially
>> *forcing* GPL onto someone. Not everyone agrees with that philosophy (in
>> my case, it depends on my mood :-)).
> 
>   It's not forced onto anyone.

Sure it is. "Use GPL, or you can't contribute to this software". It's 
very intentional coercion, and in all honesty the FSF has good reasons 
to do it, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a very high-handed 
approach.

On further research, the FSF has already addressed this question:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html

According to that, Daryl has every right to make his code public domain, 
or for that matter release it under any other GPL-compatible license. 
Checking http://cygwin.com/licensing.html, I see where that could be a 
problem (because RH offers a "commercial" license) for another OSS 
license, but that should not apply to public domain work for exactly the 
reasons *you* pointed out.

So... are we just disagreeing over "safe", or are you actually telling 
me that RH (and thus Cygwin) would *refuse* to incorporate public domain 
code?

The irony of course is that the availability of a commercial license 
makes it look like Daryl's fears are in fact very well founded. :-)

-- 
Matthew
Only Joe suffers from schizophrenia. The rest of us enjoy it.