From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: khm@sciops.net (Kurt H Maier) Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2017 11:57:01 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! In-Reply-To: References: <20170914161121.sx7eqzsqklzcncdb@matica.foolinux.mooo.com> <20170914193905.GD25914@wopr> <20170914213535.4ptpo7jtaem6x5tf@thunk.org> <20170916034032.GO3272@mcvoy.com> <201709161920.v8GJK0ec020998@freefriends.org> <20170917014349.GW3272@mcvoy.com> <201709170519.v8H5JpKx003398@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <20170917185701.GA31988@wopr> On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 02:49:16PM -0400, Chet Ramey wrote: > > I remember multiple FSF efforts to solicit volunteers for named projects. > There were lots of people willing to donate their time and effort. And > at that time, there were very few non-FSF projects licensed under the GPL, > so the issue of "absorbtion" was minor to non-existent. But that time changed, and was replaced by a time where the FSF pushed hard on copyright assignment to the FSF, and led to a time where we wound up with GPL, GPL2, GPL3, AGPL, LGPL, ad infinitum, which landed us in the present day, where half the tech organizations on earth are so unwilling to step into the morass that BSD/MIT licenses are making a big comeback. They've spent so much time trying to 'fix' international patent law by clubbing people with copyright licenses that the company behind the most popular linux distribution is working on a BSD-licensed kernel. The history of UNIX and its ilk fascinates me, but only half of it is technology. The other half of it is a bizarre forty-year-long license war, which the partisans refuse to stop fighting, even after they win. khm