Re: lynx-dev Licensing Lynx: Summary

[Brett Glass]

At 07:54 AM 10/6/99 -0500, Klaus Weide wrote:

>I am not speaking to the question of what the GPL should do but doesn't,
>find a better forum for that.

No, but you -- more than anyone else who has posted to this forum -- have
advocated the use of the GPL to block our creative efforts. Your
messages have been consistently rude, nasty and spiteful.

> > Well, I and my fellow developers have reviewed the online responses 
>
>You seem to have missed a lot of them.  You don't seem to have read
>either <http://www.flora.org/lynx-dev/html/month0999/msg00349.html>
>or the whole "More on lynx copyright" thread.  There are some questions
>waiting for an answer.

None of which are relevant. Most of them are nosy questions -- posed by
people who seem to be angling to find a way to sabotage our work -- and
are irrelevant to the issue at hand.

>If you can't even take the time to subscribe to the list 

Again, you're being needlessly insulting and derisive. I've read all of the
postings on those topics. (Duh.)

>Or if you saw them, but chose to pursue only those threads of discussion
>that you can use as vehicles for voicing discontent about the GPL, what
>are we to think about your seriousness?

Removing impediments to the use of the code is what is most relevant.

>Some gripes about the state of user interfaces in the Windows world,
>a vague promise to make it all better, no plan.

Why on Earth would we want to share our plans with you? You're clearly
hostile to any such effort, and are out either to waste our time
or extract information which would help you to undermine what we're
doing. Sorry, but that won't wash.

>Afaiac it doesn't matter whether you make income from the Lynx code.
>What matters is whether this would require giving you special rights
>that others don't share.

Others SHOULD be able to share them. The problem is that, because the
code is licensed under the GPL, they (like us) must ask for them
individually. This is intended to be an insurmountable impediment.
This is the great tragedy of the GPL: it does not make the software 
free for all to use. Despite the inflammatory rhetoric, the author
of GPLed code does NOT confer all the rights he or she has in the
code. The right to improve the code and be compensated for doing so
is intentionally withheld -- out of spite.

Which, again, is what the GPL is all about: the spite of an "ivory 
tower" academic who was frustrated because the rules of his artificial
environment didn't work in the real world. And has brought about great
and lasting harm as a result.

It's clear that you want to do the same, and so have nothing to contribute
to this discussion.

--Brett Glass