Free?

[Russel Winder]

On Sat, 2011-10-22 at 21:06 +0200, Mirko Pilger wrote:
> > GPL: "Free as in Herpes"
> 
> personally i prefer bsd style licenses but the gpl has its right to 
> exist. and while bsd ensures freedom for developers, the gpl is more 
> targeted at users. it's a kind of politic statement and i understand the 
> gnu project as an "user rights moverment".
> 
> please let this thread not turn into another bsd vs gpl flame war.

Agreed.

However, I think your characterization of the licences is not right.
All the BSD, MIT, etc. licences are about ensuring that anyone can do
anything with the code.  This ensures that no-one can stop people using
it.  GPL is about stopping organizations taking code proprietary.

There is definitely a political element to this, but itn't this about
not allowing volunteer effort to be exploited by organization for
financial gain without returning back to the community that generated
the original material.  I guess the question is whether it is morally
and ethically defensible for organizations to use material generated in
the FOSS context for profit without some form of "pay back" as a "quid
pro quo".

I disagree that this is to do with developers and users, it is to do
with proprietary vs. non-proprietary and the relationship between them.

The Java community seem to focus on the ASL 2.0 as their preferred
licence with LGPL actually being the only main option:  GPL is not
usable in this context.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
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