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Author: Rick Moen
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: GPL version 2 is a bare license. Recind. (Regarding (future) linux Code of Conduct Bannings).
Quoting Mark Rousell (mark.rousell@???):

> I wrote a long message in reply to your message but it seems it is too
> long for the list's post size limit. I have therefore posted it on a
> blog I just set up for this purpose:
> https://genericcomment.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/reply-to-rick-moen-on-dng/


Thank you, sir. I appreciate your taking the trouble, and will have a
look. (I rarely comment on blogs, though, so please don't take it
personally if I don't end up doing so on yours. It's just not my
preferred medium, mostly.)

[/me takes a while to read the blog post.]

I see at a glance that we have an unbridgeable difference of view, where
you allege that Ms. Emhke's personal agendas are inherently relevant
to the merit of CoC text she authored (a release of which Greg K-H
copied, with what you clarify are tiny changes as required to adapt it
to the kernel project -- and thanks for that, BTW).

Like software licence texts, CoC texts are _tools_. Their uses are
whatever the user is able to adapt them to. I'm accustomed, for
example, to hearing copyleft critics state that GNU General Public
License is evil because of various things Stallman intends to achieve
with it. The reasons this is a silly argument are IMO about as obvious
as the reasons why IMO your similar stance is -- but, for the record,
many years ago, I got so tired of the 'GPL is evil because it it's a key
weapon in the evil Stallman agenda to destroy proprietary software
companies' that I seriously proposed a LUG talk entitled 'Ways to
Use the GPL to Enforce Proprietary Software Business Models'.

Because it's a _tool_. Anyone who can't figure out how to use a tool to
one's _own_ ends is suffering a tragic failure of creativity.

As it happens, before I could give that deliberately provocative talk,
MySQL AB and some other firms made it so obvious that I regarded my
lecture as redundant. Currently, a bunch of the infamous 'badgeware'
firms including SugarCRM (run by my former boss Larry Augustin) are
abusing the heck out of GPL v3 via sneaking in 'badgeware' encumbrances
as 'Appropriate Legal Notices' through the GPLv3 clause 7 hook, with the
obvious intent of dissuading competing commercial use -- flagrantly
subverting the intent of free / open source software.

I don't regard an embezzler's eyeglasses as merely the instrumentality
of a crime, either. It's a tool. Tools are most reasonably judged by
what you happen to do with them, not by their creator's intent.

But you disagree. Since we cannot agree on this extremely fundamental
point, I'm afraid we lack the basis for further discussion.

That having been said, I also honestly don't see that you squarely
addressed the questions I asked, either, and instead just kind of talked
around them. (That is not a complaint. You don't owe me anything, and
I appreciate your time and trouble.)

For the record, I am not a fan of CoCs including this one, but on
grounds differing from yours (that I'm not sure are of interest here).

-- 
Cheers,     Founding member of the Hyphenation Society, a grassroots-based, 
Rick Moen   not-for-profit, locally-owned-and-operated, cooperatively-managed,
rick@???     modern-American-English-usage-improvement association.
McQ!  (4x80)