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GPL: either version 3 of the license, or any later version (Announce)

posted by marcov, 03.06.2011, 13:36
(edited by marcov on 03.06.2011, 14:08)

> I look at GPL3 as the latest version of one of the best open source
> licenses. I generally agree with the philosophy that if you pick
> something
We roughly agree, specially on the bit that forcing people to do the morally good thing is hard.

And that brings us to the force bit, and the place where we differ. IMHO the GPL should only be applied in special, strategic cases, and in most common cases the force bit hurts more than it helps, while your position could be summoned up as "force, just in case"

And I already described one prime example of that pain: getting usage of the GPL approved in corporate hierarchies outside the handful of IT multinationals. Even if the planned usage would be completely in line with the license.

The GPLv3 worsens this, it tries to screw an handful vendors out of some minor customization and scripts. (and usually these are not the smartest ones, since otherwise they wouldn't get caught.

On the flip side however, people using the GPLv3 only internally might have to rework their infrastructure if something tied to a GPLed part suddenly faces outwards. And decide to avoid the GPLv3 all together, IMHO rightfully so.

It does finely continue the GPL tradition of preparing for the worse though, damn the consequences :-)

It caused the BSDs to defect (they halted upgrading of GNU software in base, and stick to the GPLv2 while they work frantically on deGNUifying base), and the Linux kernel to change its base license to GPLv2 only.

And I really wonder if whatever v3 brings is worth carving up the united OSS front.

P.s.

I found an old document I wrote that discusses the "force" argument a bit, as part of a very old BSD vs GPL discussion:

http://www.stack.nl/~marcov/bsdvslgpl.txt

note that these were quickly written down bulletpoints for what was going to be the finishing sheet(s) of a lecture, and it is deliberately put very crude and argumentative to provoke discussion after the lecture. Don't worry, my own opinions are slightly more nuanced (the biggest flaw is heaping LGPL and GPL together) :-)

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