Change for Caldera OpenLinux Workstation

[Jeff Davies]

On Thursday 28 June 2001 13:20, Lutz Horn wrote:
> Hi all
>
> * Georg C. F. Greve <greve at gnu.org> [20010628 19:00 +0200]:
> >  || On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 18:30:09 +0200
> >  || Lutz Horn <lh at lutz-horn.de> wrote:
> >
> >  lh> We could consinder the guidelines set up by the Debian
> >  lh> project. They mark all non-free packages clearly. Even a Virtual
> >  lh> RMS is included in form of a little tool called vrms. This gives
> >  lh> you a list of all non-free packages currently installed on your
> >  lh> system.
> >

The concept of some way of comparing licenses in distros is a very good one.
Perhaps in the Brave GNU world newsletter, there should be a link to a page
where the license types in distros are summed in a table.

(this is a far more generalised and therefore useful discussion now that the
Caldera-bashing - as much as they deserve bashing).

eg: Slackware 7.1: Apache 123, BSD 35345, GPL 345345, MPL 3345345.

I'm sure that distros would see this as an issue to compete on, and
if the metric is there, they'll use it.

Also:
Apache license, like BSD, is not as "free" as GPL since it doesn't prevent
someone enhancing a peice of code, and keeping the "enhancements".
In some circumstances it might be deemed to be a good thing to be less "free"
to encourage uptake of a standard eg: TCP/IP, Vorbis Ogg.
But long term the GPL is superior since it allows evolution, without competing
proprietary forks.

Jeff Davies