[OT] open-source license issues

[Nick Sabalausky]

"spir" <denis.spir at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.3427.1302601308.4748.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On 04/12/2011 04:18 AM, dsimcha wrote:
>> On 4/11/2011 9:55 PM, Daniel Gibson wrote:
>>> Doesn't mysql even have some retarded restriction like "it's GPL but may
>>> not be used for commercial purposes so buy mysql if you wanna use it to
>>> make money"?
>>>
>>
>> According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysql) it's dual 
>> licensed
>> GPL or proprietary. (Actually it's a slightly modified GPL that's 
>> **less**
>> restrictive than the vanilla one.)
>
> There is a misconseption (or rather rethorical playing on words) in the 
> open-source argumentation versus free software: a license like BSD is said 
> to be less restrictive. But in fact it is more privative to (end-)users, 
> in that it allows direct users of the software to deprive them from rights 
> that would have been guaranted by a free software license.
>

Except such software is more likely to have just simply used some other 
library instead, something either more BSD-like or in-house proprietary. In 
other words, in actual practice, (L)GPL tends to discoruage people from 
actually making derivative works. So that still works against users gaining 
benefit from the software anyway.