RE: IETF and open source license compatibility

["Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[e-mail]>]

Some points:

1) Open Source software and 'free software' as defined by the FSF are not the same thing.

Historically, open source licenses such as BSD and Apache or in the case of CERN libwww, a grant to the public domain have proved considerably more effective than GNU copyleft.

The World wide web code was made public domain rather than being GNU, expressly because we considered the GNU license to be counter-productive to our aims. 


2) Those of us who understand RMS's political agenda are more likely to oppose it than to support it.

RMS has on numerous occasions stated that his intention in drafting the GNU copyleft was to poison the well of proprietary works. He has made this statement to me personally and unambiguously. That is a political position that many are opposed to. If RMS chooses to place restrictions on FSF intellectual property to enforce compliance with his political views he has no standing when he opposes restrictions placed by others.

It is an entirely reasonable point of view for an IPR holder to craft a license grant in such a way that it is only compatible with a subset of open source licenses. In terms of Internet adoption Apache compatibility is sufficient. 


3) Write only campaigns decrease sympathy for the position being promoted.

I suspect I am not alone in reading only a portion of the FSF correspondence. Statistical sampling indicates a high probability that this is representative.

If RMS has an issue with an IETF protocol he should make the case himself, not set his rent-a-mob onto the IETF mailing list. Not a single one of the messages I have read has given a concise explanation of what the problem RMS has with the TLS-authz spec.