Public Software Fund's First Project

Russ Nelson writes "The Public Software Fund's first project has been funded for two months worth of development. Tom Jennings (of Fidonet fame) will be writing software to do peer-to-peer file sharing of free software RPM packages, improving the existing free software packages up2date, /current/, and BitTorrent. This will keep new distro releases from being slashdotted."

Finally...

[URoRRuRRR]

The perfect chance for P2P to redeem itself from being label as illegal activity only. Unfortunately, it won't appeal to 90% of users, so it won't. The idea is still nice.

Re:BSD is anti-consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

You're simplistic statements are incorrect.

Standard copyright favors the IP producer over consumers. i.e. The producer is incentivized to create because the government will protect them in the courts.

The GPL favors consumers over producers. i.e. The incentive to create is minimized because profit from selling software as a product is reduced to almost zero.

The BSD License favors neither over the other. i.e. Consumers can use software in the same way as provided in the GPL, and producers can build upon the software without jeopardizing their intellectual property.

Re:Peer-to-peer pioneer kills self

[edhall]

The mean-spirited and outright nasty comments that have gotten attached to every post mentioning Gene Kan's death remind me of why I cringe every time Slashdot announces that someone has died. Although it would be nice for Slashdot to provide a place for those of us touched by this tragedy to pay our respects, I'm actually relieved that they haven't. It would be painful to see all the trash that some of the miscreant AC's who hang out here would post.

Goodbye, Gene.

-Ed