⇥ A busy box, indeed
I normally reply to comments with comments (somehow, replying with a new post feels like cheating), but in the case of my previous post about BusyBox, the variety of comments makes it impossible, so I want to note a few additional thoughts:
- First of all, J.B. Nicholson-Owens posted a very detailed and well-written (if a little acerbic) rebuttal to my post (trackbacks are off in this blog, so if you write something referencing one of my posts, please leave a comment saying so). J.B. and I have a very different idea of freedom, best summarized in this sentence:
Of course we can’t have all possible freedoms, as some freedoms conflict.
Call me a hopeless naïve, but I believe that true freedom doesn’t need to be picked-and-chosen. - Believe it or not, I have read the GPL, and I do understand it. Despite my unfortunate choice of words, I realize that using a piece of GPL software does not require redistribution of the source code. I meant the term “use” in relation to redistributing a binary package.
- The goal of my post was not to state that the BusyBox developers don’t have the right to license their software any which way they want, or that they don’t have the right to
enforce the GPL, or that companies that do not comply with it are right, or that (at least according to the GPL) there is a difference between free as in beer and free as in freedom:Personally, I have no problem with the BusyBox folks suing the pants off of those companies that infringe on their license. They are, after all, very clear on their adoption of the GPL and what they expect those who use their software to do.
I’m not sure how I can make it more abundantly clear than that, so I’m not even going to try. - Ultimately, my point was simply this: is the value of BusyBox enhanced or reduced by their choice of license? Or, otherwise stated, if there were a compatible BusyBox replacement that were licensed under a BSD-style license, would it be more successful?
Comments
is the value of BusyBox enhanced or reduced by their choice of license?
Personally, I can’t discuss this question because I don’t know what you mean by “value”. If you mean “number of used copies”, then you might be right. But I don’t think the busybox guys share this definition. What is “the value of BusyBox” ?