I’d like to see more bad English on mailing lists, and fewer apologies from non-native speakers about their poor English skills. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in trying to communicate in a second, third, or fourth language and not being an expert. And it’d be a shame if non-native speakers let fear or embarrassment hold them back from making a vital contribution or asking a question that could help them succeed in contributing or using FLOSS tools....
I was surprised, to say the least, this morning to read Simon Phipps’ tweet that “ Richard Stallman and others declare GPL inadequate to protect software freedom.” Lack of caffeine, maybe? Nope. Stallman and Knowledge Ecology International really have sent a letter to the European Commission saying that Oracle shouldn’t be permitted to acquire MySQL in its merger with Sun. Why? Because Oracle would then be the only party able to release MySQL under licenses that are not the GPL, and because Oracle could prevent MySQL from forking under a license other than GPLv2....