[OT] open-source license issues

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 12.04.2011 10:41, schrieb Daniel Gibson:
> Am 12.04.2011 10:29, schrieb spir:
>> On 04/12/2011 09:05 AM, Andrew Wiley wrote:
>>> 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
> 
> I don't have a study at hand, but companies often prefer BSD-style
> licenses to the GPL because they want to be able to reuse the code in
> their proprietary without open-sourcing them as well.
> Example: Apple reimplements the samba-service (SMB - Windows file
> sharing) because they don't like the GPLv3. And they push LLVM because
> they don't want to use GCC anymore. (But maybe this is because of the
> GPLv3 and not the GPL in general.)
> 
> Furthermore many (most?) Open Source Java projects are mainly developed
> by companies and they chose this kind of license, so I think it's
> reasonable to assume that they prefer this kind of license to the GPL
> and wouldn't invest so much into these projects if they had a license
> they disliked.
> 
> Cheers,
> - Daniel

What I'd like to add: The GPL is an ideological license. Most companies
aren't ideological, at least not when it comes to software licenses.
They don't use and develop FOSS because they think that the idea of free
software is great and all software should be free (because the products
they sell aren't).
Companies support Open Source for practical reasons (i.e. to save money
and effort): Some components of their software is pretty generic and a
lot of other companies need the same components, so they collaborate and
everybody saves money. But other components of software is pretty
specific and they make money of it so they don't want to release it as
Open Source. So they can't use the GPL for this kind of stuff and even
the LGPL isn't too useful if you want to integrate the source directly
and not put it in a DLL.

Of course they could do that without Open Source, but I guess it's a
huge pain in the ass because of all the legal mumbo jumbo involved when
collaborating with a competitor on closed source software. They need
NDAs, they have to specify who may do what with the software and the
source (maybe sell the source to a 3rd party etc), what happens if both
companies suddenly start suing each other because of some reason, what
happens if one of the companies is bought (possibly by the other
companies arch enemy), ....

With Open Source there's just the project, possibly organized in a
democratic way, and everybody can use it and can contribute - even if
they're competitors that would *never* work together otherwise.

Cheers,
- Daniel