April 3rd, 2002
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Quote: Originally posted by plasticparadox at http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...?threadid=9268
Well said.
First I'd like to address your point about 'technical necessity'. What I was referring to, and perhaps should have made more clear, is that the examples you brought up of blocking were because of the technical limitations of the Internet. Example being that sending a file from Chile to Russia typically would result in a poor connection, because of poor infrastructure and dropped packets, so on and so forth. Therefore, it is quite acceptable to block nodes such as these. It is a totally different story to block Buddy from the north end of town because he uses LimeWire. See where I'm going with this?
Regarding your point about making a buck from your CPU, this is perhaps the strongest argument that can be made for the OpenSource p2p. And it is one that I can agree with. You're totally right; your CPU is contributing to the wealth of those who would manipulate the Gnutella network for their self-benefit.
That being said however, your CPU is being used for that purpose in a very indirect manner. You don't see ad banners popping up when Joe@BearShare downloads something from you. But yes, I know, it's the principle of the matter. While it is true that your CPU is contributing the wealth of these developers, your CPU is also contributing to the growth of Gnutella and the freedom to share information. And isn't that what it's all about?
How do they spam, spy, and use you? You use Gnucleus, am I right in presuming this?
They will never create their own closed network. It is important to their userbase that they be able to access all nodes, OpenSource or not. And by the definition of OpenSource, they would be able to do that.
My strongest argument on this topic is on the definition of OpenSource.
_snip_
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
Rationale: In order to get the maximum benefit from the process, the maximum diversity of persons and groups should be equally eligible to contribute to open sources. Therefore we forbid any open-source license from locking anybody out of the process.
Some countries, including the United States, have export restrictions for certain types of software. An OSD-conformant license may warn licensees of applicable restrictions and remind them that they are obliged to obey the law; however, it may not incorporate such restrictions itself.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.
_/snip_
Please refer to http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html. This is about as straight from the horse's mouth as you can get.
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