Re: GPL is not the only free licence, and FSF not the only holder
John Galt <galt@inconnu.isu.edu> writes:
> On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, John Lines wrote:
>
> > By being the first, and most frequently mentions Free Software license the GPL
>
> Survey says...Bzzzt! The GPL is a latecomer in the free software arena.
Um, the Copyleft predates the BSD free license. The first things
released BSD free were some games posted to comp.sources.unix. Later
came the two networking tapes, and 4.4 Lite.
The GPL is a trivial modification of the Copyleft to make it "a
subroutine" that can be generically adapted to any program. The terms
of the GPL Version 1 are essentially identical to those for GNU Emacs
or GCC going back long before BSD even thought about making anything
free.
Also, were it not for RMS, BSD might well have never released anything
free; it was conversations between him and people at Berkeley that
caused them to realize the importance of free software.
Thomas
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