One of the most significant moments in the history of the modern software industry took place in 1998 when Netscape announced plans to release the source code of its browser under a license that would freely permit modification and redistribution. That pivotal event represents the point at which software freedom extended its reach beyond the enthusiast community and began its ascent into the mainstream.
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Balzac
16 years 2 weeks 1 day 19 hours ago
I found that article pretty annoying.
The "Free Software Summit" is not what it was called:
"On April 7th, Tim O'Reilly held a so called "Freeware Summit" that brought together many free software leaders and developers: Linus Torvalds, Eric Allman, Kirk McKusick, Michael Tiemann, Eric Raymond, John Gilmore, Paul Vixie, Brian Behlendorf, Jamie Zawinsky, Tom Paquin, John Ousterhout, Phil Zimmermann, Rich Morin, Mark Stone, Greg Olson, Fred Baker, Larry Wall, Guido van Rossum."
Also, who among them is a "free software leader"? This is the "open source" crowd who like to pretend the Free Software Foundation and the GNU projects don't even exist.
Also, listen to this from Paul Vixie:
"I've been disappointed in the continued growth of GPL licensing, since it means people don't really want to share, they want to control others. I'm using the BSD license since what I really want to do is share my code."
BSD licensing is fine with me, but I like the way the GPL explicitly protects my software from becoming proprietary.
When the proprietary software monopoly has been broken and the media has been liberated by ~ Free Software ~ , I'll be happy that I stuck with the GNU GPL.
aboutblank
16 years 2 weeks 1 day 12 hours ago
If all users had all the
If all users had all the rights to free software, there will be no need of the GPL. Unfortunately, people feel the need to subjugate people through software and so, we use Copyright law and the GPL to ensure that all users have all four essential freedoms for our software.