hypothetical(?) GPL problem

[Xavi Drudis Ferran]

El Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 10:06:29AM +0100, Marc Eberhard deia:
> 
> > That's what I do at home, but I don't think I can do it at my job.
> 
> Why not? If they don't care about the format of documents sent to you, why
> should you care for them to be able to read it? By the way: One secretary
> told me, that mime type text/tex is not readable, because Eudora doesn't
> recognize this format and refuses to display it, so it can't be plain text.
> It was really a big surprise for her, when I asked her to save the file to
> the disk and just open it with any editor... it was simple ASCII text... at
> least she believes me more now then Eudora. :-)
>
Basically because there is no policy enforcing proper formats for attachments, 
and I'm nobody's boss to tell them what to do (quite the reverse). So if 
the company pays for my time, my computer and miscrosoft's crap and wants
me to use it, I can't hardly refuse without either convincing them or 
looking for another job (and my previous jobs weren't better in this 
issue). At least I can use debian most of the time where I work now.
  
> > Well in fact I don't send them TeX files at home, I try to give example 
> > and use formats that are both open and widespread enough for the recipient 
> > to be likely to have a viewer, instead of taking vengeance. But maybe
> > your strategy is better.
> 
> If you try to find a suitable format for them, they will never start to
> think about the whole problem. Only when they receive a format, they can't
> cope with, they will start to think. So it's not a matter of vengeance, it's
> just a measure to make them start thinking about the whole issue.
>
A little anecdote. Once in a small mailing list someone sent an MS word 2000
attachment. A reply came up complaining about using incompatible formats 
for documents and asking everybody to have some consideration towards 
people who didn't have the same software and this kind of things. All 
very well, until I read the part that said that everybody should 
send attachments in word 98 format, which was the "normal" thing to have 
(i.e. what the person writing the complaint had). So, some people won't 
start thinking about these issues so easily.
 
But I take note of your strategy. I think I'll start using it when somebody 
sends me garbage a second time...

> 
> I was more thinking of the difference between the GPL and the LGPL. I do
> think too, that the BSD licence might be to free.
>
Yes, I think I deviated the discussion more toward a GPL-BSD one which 
wasn't the original idea. Sorry.
  

-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org