VanLUG Email Archive
> > The entire Linux kernel is basically done from scrath. Almost all
> > of the userland was taken from GNU and BSD work.
>
> Wasn't that what I said? ('Linux' is the kernel, nothing else).
Well, the popular use of `Linux' includes a userland. I know a lot
of people who, if I ask them what OS they use, will reply `Linux'
rather than `Linux with the GNU utilities and libraries.' I expect
you fall into this category too. :-)
> > (Thus the term `Gnu Public Virus.' It infects everything it touches.)
>
> I woldn't argue about this, since I don't know enough about the legal
> aspects, but we have had quite a discussion about all this (and related)
> issue on debian-devel, and my feeling is that your point is not quite true
> ('The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth')...
Well, I left out the bit where some people feel this is A Good
Thing. One person I was talking to about this said that he felt it
was perfectly fair that, should I elect to use a hundred lines of
GPL'd code in my 10,000 line program, I should be forced to put
the entire 10,000 line program under the GPL.
I've personally spent time rewriting code that had already been
written but put under the GPL because I had to use it in software
that was under a different license. That's time I didn't spend
contributing new free software to the world.
cjs
Curt Sampson
Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc. Through infinite mist, software reverberates
Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 In code possess'd of invisible folly.