Month: August 2002

I have updated an earlier post about Steve Talbott in conversation with Kevin Kelly.

RE: Should Wine follow Sleepycat’s Deven T. Corzine (deven@ties.org) on Date: Fri Feb 22 2002 – 11:45:13 EST wrote:

Sleepycat's approach is to let anyone use the code freely with open-source applications, since they're giving something back by increasing the amount of open source code in the world. For those companies that aren't willing to contribute to the common good in that fashion, they sell them a fairly traditional software license instead.

This mailinglist is a way of discovering the meaning of the distinctions, in a series of well worded collaborative posts. From the paragraphs above it is possible to glean how the purists might object. Is theres something tainted in allowing closed software for a price? We will let you dump the oranges in the sea, as long as you pay some money to a charity? Or must these pragmatic arrangments be permitted until they become part of a more primary contradition, when Linux has world domination, and the battle is for the software that runs on it? I somehow prefer a clearer dividing line, but then what do I know, here in Windows XP!!

Berkeley DB

Sleepycat Software distributes Berkeley DB under a
license agreement that draws on both the UC Berkeley
copyright and the GPL. The license guarantees that
Berkeley DB will remain an Open Source product and
provides Sleepycat with opportunities to make money
to fund continued development on the software.

I am intrigued by licences, not because of the legal complexity, rather because of the way in which some make the world worse, and others make it better. Not just the world, but the noosphere, that is the offence. It is a sin to hoard knowledge, just as it is a sin to dump oranges in the sea to keep prices high when people are starving. The logic of a system that makes that viable for a few is a flawed logic. It might take a lawyer to explain why the Sleepycat licence is used instead of the GPL… but it does seem to accomplish the same end, of keeping modifications open for our future.

I just noticed my use of the word “sin” here. That may be how this item relates to the seemingly diverse string of items in my weblog. Sin ties in with soul. Crime is wrong, but crimes against soul are sins?

I’m glad this item by William Rivers Pitt makes it into the top of the links in daypop. It puts clearly the view of Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, who is opposed to the war. He has more info than anyone to refute the Bush lies. This war must not happen!

This is not about the security of the United States,” said this card-carrying Republican while pounding the lectern. “This is about domestic American politics. The national security of the United States of America has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven political ambitions. The day we go to war for that reason is the day we have failed collectively as a nation.