[OT] open-source license issues

spir denis.spir at gmail.com
Tue Apr 12 01:29:20 PDT 2011


On 04/12/2011 09:05 AM, Andrew Wiley wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 1:52 AM, Russel Winder<russel at russel.org.uk>  wrote:
>> On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 19:47 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> [ . . . ]
>>>
>>> Regardless, I think we've clearly demonstrated the complete impenetrability
>>> of (L)GPL. I've long since given up trying to understand it, and I seriously
>>> doubt that anyone really truly understands it (it's the C++ of the legal
>>> world). Even if you do miraculously understand one form of it, there still
>>> probably about 10 other versions and half of them are even incompatible with
>>> each other (in poorly-understood ways). The whole thing's just a damn mess.
>>> I've always found it best to just avoid any (L)GPL source or library
>>> outright. Not worth the trouble.
>>
>> GPL and LGPL are fine licences.  They only appear impenetrable because
>> there is no case law in the USA or UK to define the accepted meaning as
>> opposed to the intended meaning.  It may be that in countries that do
>> not rely on case law to give meaning to statutes, contracts and licence,
>> things are different.
>>
>> Personally I find licences such as BSD, MIT, ASL, etc. ones to avoid
>> since they allow organizations to take software, sell it for profit and
>> return absolutely nothing to the development community.  I think LGPL is
>> the preferred licence for all non-proprietary software and am very glad
>> to find libraries that use it.
>>
>> Sadly the Java world seems to have slipped from using LGPL to being
>> obsessed with using ASL 2.0 and professing hatred of LGPL.  ASL 2.0
>> claims to have a patent clause unlike all the other non (L)GPL licences,
>> but until this is tested in court so that there is case law no-one, not
>> even lawyers, actually know what the licences mean or entail.
>
> The Java world likes ASL precisely because software licensed under it
> can be sold. Take a look at the signature lines of the main
> contributors to large open source Java projects. It's common for large
> companies to pay programmers to develop open source software that's
> eventually shipped in products, and at the end of the day, the
> community benefits.

This is complete misinterpretation. *All* free software can be sold.

> Now yes, it's entirely an honor system, and there's certainly a risk
> involved, but in general, the ASL has made Java's open source
> community grow quite a bit.

This is an empty assertion. Can you point to any study logically demonstrating 
any relation between Java's preferred license and "Java's open source community 
grow[ing] quite a bit"? Or even to a theoretical reason for this?

Denis
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