[nycbug-talk] Eric S. Raymond speaks heresy

[Siobhan Lynch]

On 3/24/09 8:52 AM, Steven Kreuzer wrote:
> Eric S. Raymond spoke at the Long Island Linux Users Group not to long
> ago and I found a blog post from someone who was at the talk.
> According to him the GPL and other viral licenses are no longer needed
> as they do more harm than good to the community.
>
>    "One of my heretical opinions is that we worry way too much about
> licensing. And in particular; I don't think we really need reciprocal
> licensing. I don't think we need licenses like the GPL, that punish
> people for taking code closed-source."
>
> He then went on to say that the BSD style licenses are a better
> alternative to the GPL
>    

This is very interesting, since back in the late 90's, Eric and I used 
to have dinner with each other about 3-4 times a year. During this time, 
I was one of those rabid BSD zealots, and he was a staunch GPL/Linux 
advocate. Eric and I got along well, we agreed on many things, such as 
gun control, polyamory, science fiction, regional dialecticism - but the 
one thing we always agreed to disagree on (but always talked rationally 
and calmly about) - was the merits of both licensing schemes. He was 
primarily a GPL advocate, and I was a BSD advocate.

Its nice to know that in the past 8-10 years or so, he's come around to 
my way of thinking.... however I'm less rabid (and less active) than I 
used to be.

-Trish



> The entire transcript of that portion of the talk can be found at  http://dotcommie.net//feed/index.php?id=160
> and video of the entire talk can be found at http://www.archive.org/details/LILUG_20090310_ESR
>
> --
> Steven Kreuzer
> http://www.exit2shell.com/~skreuzer
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at lists.nycbug.org
> http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>