Re: future of quail

Julian Bradfield <jcb+xeb(a)jcbradfield.org&gt; writes: Nonsense. If there is anything acting like a contaminant or virus, it is copyright. You can't integrate or redistribute _any_ software from third parties short of an explicit license. The GPL is a license that at least allows you redistribution. Calling it names for that is disingenuous, to say the least. It's like calling the common cold nasty names because unlike Ebola, it does not have the decency to leave its victims dead. Do you call the Microsoft EULA a contaminant or virus? It allows Microsoft to remotely destroy your computer and data without your agreement or compensation if they think it useful in order to try implementing new Digital Rights Management schemes on your hardware. The "Windows Genuine Advantage" program shut down ten thousands of perfectly legal installations remotely when going wrong. Microsoft tried to fix this in a few weeks, simply because it was bad press. But they were _covered_ by the license. If they had decided to simply let all those computers remain broken without even trying to fix the problem, the license would have permitted them to do so. Of course, they would not have liked to have this made into a class action suite since it is not in their interest to have their license poison examined too closely in the light of the actual consequences. People are fine with licenses that essentially allow rootkitting and bricking your computer. And use the term "viral" for the GPL. That's simply successful brainwashing by the content industry propaganda. The right answer is "how are any of the GPL's terms more restricting than those of software licenses you don't call names?". And of course tell commerce "if you don't like the consequences of copyright, don't complain about the GPL. Lobby your favorite politician to make copyright laws and their extensions less absurd, and the GPL will have less impact on your business along with the rest of those licenses." -- David Kastrup _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://lists.xemacs.org/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta