On 9/14/07, David H. Lynch Jr. <dhlii@dlasys.net> wrote:
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> Sebastien Carlier wrote:
> > So, you are indeed taking the point of view that there is "good freedom"
> > and "bad freedom", and that coercion is needed to allow "good freedom"
> > to prevail.  I am glad you said so since it is totally related to what
> > follows.
> >
> >
>     Total freedom without coercion is anarchy.

I never mentioned "total freedom"; I don't think it could be achieved,
and I didn't mean to imply that it is desirable.

What I wrote above was meant to call attention to the fact that there
are different kinds of freedom motivated by different ethical
principles or political agendas, and that claiming that the less
restrictive BSD license is "a social failure that the GPL aims to end"
is a call for heavier coercion machinery.  Is this really going to end
a "social failure"?

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>     By adopting a copyright and a license BSD has rejected anarchy and
>     accepted the coercive force of the law. Repeatedly there have been
>     cries on this list to force the Linux/GPL developers into complying
>     with the BSD License.

Yes, I understand.

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>     The BSD License defines obeying copyright law, complying with the
>     license and crediting the original authors as acceptable restrictions
>     on one's freedoms.

I support this entirely.

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>     Failing to preserve a copyright/license/credit is a BSD example of a
>     "Bad Freedom"

Again, agreed.

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>     The only distinction between a BSD License and the GPL is the
>     author's view of which freedoms are good and which are bad.

The point I wanted to make (but apparently failed) is that the GPL
seems to encourage a more authoritarian and fanatical mindset than the
BSD licenses, for which mutual decent regard would seem to suffice in
most cases (perhaps I am a naive here), and which rewards developers
by ensuring that they get due credit for their work.

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>    If you are really claiming that BSD Licenses offer "total freedom",

I am not, and there is a world between "total freedom" and armies of
lawyers serving hidden agendas.

The BSD licenses explicitly state which rights are granted and under
what conditions, in a clear and concise way.  It can not possibly be
understood as "totally free", and I am as shocked as you are that some
people think that they are entitled to take the rights granted by a
license while disregarding the conditions imposed by the author(s).

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>    make's no distinctions between the values of different freedoms,
>    and is completely non-coercive then why are BSD developers upset over
>    The Atheros HAL ?
>    The anger is because more freedom has been taken than your license
>    offered.

I feel that the anger is entirely justified; I am sorry that my
message was so unclear that it could be understood as meaning totally
the opposite of what I meant to communicate.

My sole grief against the GPL is its vulnerability to manipulation of
well-meaning developers.

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>     You can not have total freedom absent coercion, and copyright's and
>     licenses.
>     They are incompatible.

Agreed.  You can have a license that is short enough and clear enough
that lawyers don't need to get involved at every step, that relies
more on mutual respect than on coercion, and that gives users as much
freedom as is fair for the author(s).  I find that the BSD licenses
achieve this, and this is part of why I switched to OpenBSD.  The
unequaled quality of the code and documentation was another strong
motivation, and I expect to contribute code in the near future.

-- 
Sebastien