Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 12:09:10 +0200
From: Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>
To: Werner Almesberger <wa@almesberger.net>
Cc: lm@work.bitmover.com, miquels@cistron-office.nl,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
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On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 00:12:17 -0300
Werner Almesberger <wa@almesberger.net> wrote:

> Larry McVoy wrote:
> > These discussions always make me wonder if the open source crowd is ever
> > going to realize it's reasonable to be friendly with commercial companies.
> 
> The problem is that you can't trust a company. You may choose to
> trust people who control or shape a company, but they may lose
> that control, and then all bets are off.

And that is exactly _the_ argument in this whole discussion. There seem to be
people out there who want to make a living from _others_ _ancient_ work they
bought for small bucks by sueing just about anyone.

GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term, Larry.
That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am able to use it
as is in five years from now. If I depend on being nice to commercial
companies, it may well turn out, that they are not being nice to me no matter
what I do.
In other words: it's all about being free or being dependant on goodwill.

Greets to the land of the free and the home of the brave,
Stephan
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