Apple and Open Source

Richard Stallman rms at gnu.org
Mon Mar 29 15:44:21 UTC 1999


    I had never understood the right to privacy to be a goal of Free Software
    licensing.

It was one of my goals in designing the GPL.

	       The GPL, in fact, arguably removes the right to keep personal
    coding techniques private.

I would not say that.

    >     The patent clauses are curious and I can see the danger in the fact that
    >     Apple can keep you from ever getting a chance to fight a patent in court.
    >     On the other hand, Apple has granted use of an unknown number of patents
    >     for use in free software. This seems like a good thing.
    > 
    > These are two separate actions.  The latter would be a good thing, not
    > a problem, of course, but the former is a problem.

    So, then perhaps the requirement to make your code available publicly if used
    for commercial purposes is ok but the termination of copyright due to patent
    litigation is not.

You have misinterpreted my words; that is not what I intended to say.

Ordinarily I would try to explain what I did intend to say, but I am
getting frustrated with your tendency to misunderstand things I have
said, and throw your misunderstandings back at me aggressively.  If
you are going to misunderstand no matter what I do, I may as well
minimize the time I spend explaining.






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