[plug] Flamebait

[The Thought Assassin]

On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Christian wrote:
> Why is it that other people who have violated the GPL have not had to
> seek "forgiveness" from the copyright holders for violation in the past?
> (Prominent example being Corel but I'm sure people can think of more.)
Pass. Probably because noone asked RMS, and noone else noticed the clause
of the license. To be honest, I think that RMS actually thought that
offering legal forgiveness from the FSF would be seen as a gesture of
reconciliation, rather than an attempt to outline past differences - as I
mentioned, it is unlikely that it was legally necessitated by any FSF code
in KDE, so it is more a matter of posture rather than legality. I suppose
that in other situations, RMS did not feel the need for such a (perhaps
illadvised) gesture, but the history of hostility called for it here.

Either way, I think it has done more to draw attention to the conflict
than to mend any fences - analogous, in fact to some of the arguments
against an official "Sorry" statement from our government.

-Greg Mildenhall