Sun3

[Alexandre Oliva]

Bertrand Guiheneuf writes:

> I felt like abused when Transvirtual announced, after 2 years of
> freeware developpement, that kaffe would stop to be a freeware.

So did I.  But then, they announced that Kaffe would be released under
the GPL, which means Kaffe is Free and (this release) will always be
Free.

> The problem would have been completely different if the
> situatiuon had be clear from the beginning.

The only thing that changed is that any further development of Kaffe
can no longer be used in systems that are not Free.  IMO, this is
great.

> What if Linus Torvald decided to stop distribute Linux freely? 

Godzillions of people would keep the free development of Linux.  No
one can stop them from starting from the last Free release of Linux,
just like no one can stop a commercial company from using Kaffe 0.9.2
in a non-free project.  But this same company cannot use Kaffe 0.10.0, 
nor the forthcoming Kaffe 1.0.

> A lot of companies and public institutes decided to buy PC's because 
> Linux was freeware.

And it will remain so, because there are so many people that
appreciate this.

> Changing a license "on the fly" is the best way to make sure of a
> wide-spread diffusion of a software. But it's not fair.

What's unfair about preventing Kaffe from being used in non-Free
systems?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva
mailto:oliva at dcc.unicamp.br mailto:aoliva at acm.org
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, SP, Brasil