that old GNU/Linux argument

[Antonio Olivares]

> > I have also found a page in which it clearly explains
> some problems with
> > the GPL
> > <quote from
> http://www.topology.org/linux/gpl.html> 
> > An analogy for the GPL would be the farmer who
> receives the gift of a GPL
> > cow from a neighbour. The cow is completely free, but
> all of the milk from
> > the cow must be given away for free, and all of the
> cow's calves, [...]
> 
> Yet another meaningless pseudo-analogy representing free
> software as gratis 
> material goods. People who want to blacken free software
> love that kind of 
> comparisons, but they only work on really clueless people
> who are completely 
> unaware of the fundamental difference between atoms and
> numbers. The analogy 
> collapses once you realize that information can not be
> moved, only copied, 
> and matter can not be copied, only moved.
> 
> If that represents the quality of www.topology.org, then I
> feel zero need to 
> look at that other page, "lingl.html".
> 
> Björn Persson

If the information cannot be moved, how come the wireless drivers built with BSD license in OpenBSD by Theo de Raadt  were moved to GPL license.  Here you say cannot be moved, yet you say can be copied.

Here's a statement from him regarding the code sharing
<quote http://kerneltrap.org/OpenBSD/Stealing_Versus_Sharing_Code>
"GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope -- the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time. But once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back.
"Ironic."
</quote>

The code was relicensed under GPL and not in a dual license which would have preserved the original.  

http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Relicensing_Code

I do not want to blacken free software, the GPL already does this.  It restricts some freedoms including the cooperating between the BSD and GPL camps.  The GPL did not make the drivers, BSD people did, now they take the code and make it theirs and not give back to the guys who did the work.  Yes one of the copyright holders agreed to license the work under the GPL, but why can't the two camps work together and improve software.

When you wrote 

> The analogy 
> collapses once you realize that information can not be
> moved, only copied, 
> and matter can not be copied, only moved.
May I ask why the code was moved to GPL, it was also copied?  Does that make sense?  


Regards,

Antonio