[vorbis] Vorbis licensing...

[Monty]

A bit off topic, and yet totally relevant.  This was posted to Slashdot comments some time back; no idea if it's real or fake, but I'd like to think it's real ;-)

          By Routers staff writer Django Shoenhopper, Copyright, 1999 

          Bill Joy, best known as one of the principal engineers and Operating 
          Systems software developers at Sun Microsystems, and formerly a core 
          developer of the free BSD UNIX operating system written at the 
          University of Berkeley in the late '70's and early '80's, let down his 
          hair yesterday and was caught reciting at a well known San Francisco 
          Poetry Slam. Mr. Joy took the stage right after the well known Amistad 
          Maupin, author of the classic "Tales of the City" series, 
          recited his famous "Ode to the claw-like scratches on this '70's 
          bath house table" during the "Queen Phatima Amazon-Girl With 
          Short-Spiked-Hair Poetry Slam" and let loose his own sort of 
          software "Howl" to the delight of audience software developers 
          and the engineering uninitiated alike. 

          Entitled "Free means FREE GODDAMMIT! (the GPL is 
          EVIL)" Mr. Joy eloquently presented his opinion on the Free 
          Software licensing debate which has raged through engineering circles 
          ever since East Coast programmer and Free Software advocate Richard 
          Stallman hired several copyright attorneys to develop his so-called 
          "CopyLeft" General Public License. 

          Here is an excerpt: 

                Free means FREE GODDAMMIT! (the GPL is EVIL) 

                I sit here at my terminal 
                coding a storm in my vi, 
                a malloc() for some array, 
                while strncpy() bounds a check, 
                but inside I seethe -- inside I rumble, 
                at all the lines locked up, 
                and the derived headers claimed with glee, 
                for I know the caged free() 
                consumed by the GPL! 

                Free means FREE GODDAMMIT, 
                it means I take and offer as I please, 
                it doesn't mean to taint my work, 
                just because I swiped some header, 
                or one little readline, 
                it's the state of being FREE, 
                as opposed to the state of being NOT FREE! 

                Don't you understand RMS, 
                the GPL is EVIL!, 
                it's a blight of a free license, 
                and a virus to behold, 
                consuming all code afterwards, 
                in an atomic chain reaction, 
                like red tide spread across our ocean, 
                all our oysters now inedible! 

                Free coders far and wide, 
                listen to my swan-song by the sea, 
                for while Solaris kicks BSD's ass, 
                and my SCSL is a sight to see, 
                at least BSD and MIT leave code FREE, 
                unlike that UNAMERICAN red GPL crap, 
                with it RMS will suck you dry, 
                Because Free means FREE GODDAMMIT! 
                and The GPL is EVIL! 

          When asked for comment Richard Stallman had only this to say,"Wow, 
          Bill is a terrible poet!" 

          But some here suspect that Mr. Stallman's response only belies both his 
          East Coast snobbery for missing out on the new poetry slam revolution 
          here in San Francisco, and his envy at Mr. Joy's enlightened West 
          Coast writing style and attitude. 

Monty

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