Re: Movable type and "almost free" software

[Russell Nelson <nelson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sam Johnston writes:
 > <>This week's LWN (http://lwn.net/Articles/86020/) compares qmail to 
 > Movable type (with reference to Six Apart's recent announcement[1] which 
 > has upset users left[2], right[3] and centre[4]). It talks about there 
 > being no qmail releases since June 1998,

Why does this LWN article ignore netqmail?  One might as reasonably
criticize the PBM package because the author has not put out any new
releases.  They'll say that the critical difference is in the
licensing.  They're wrong.  qmail has always been licensed under a
freely copyable without modification license.  That is exactly what
the netqmail package is.  Freely copyable without modification.  The
only thing that you lose in the qmail->netqmail transition is the
ability to distribute unmodified pre-compiled binaries.  Guess what?
Nobody does that anyway!  Of course, there are people distributing
modified pre-compiled binaries now (can you say Plesk?); they could
easily switch to distributing netqmail instead, and be equally at
fault under the law.

Note that I haven't read the article because it is a proprietary
article.  I find it VERY IRONIC that they criticize software that
isn't freely copyable in an article that isn't freely copyable.

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