Free?

[Russel Winder]

On Sat, 2011-10-22 at 12:29 -0700, Sean Kelly wrote:
> I don't like either one, because having the letters "GPL" in a license name is an automatic hands-off from legal in every company I've ever worked. 

I think this may be right pragmatically, but is it simply that lawyers
for these companies have a knee-jerk reaction of panic whenever the GPL
is mentioned.  There are clearly situations and uses for which GPL code
simply cannot be used in an organization creating proprietary code, but
to have a blanket statement of "no GPL code" is actually to cut the
organization off from a huge resource that can be used to generate
profit and still play fair with the FOSS community.

Having written the previous email and the above, it occurs to me that we
should stop seeing this as a FOSS vs proprietary war where one must win
at the expense of the other, and ask the question how can both be nice
to each other so that proprietary makes money and they and FOSS
interwork together appropriately.  Clearly Microsoft will not be
involved in this collaborative atmosphere, given their historical
statements, but they should not be seen as thought leaders here.

-- 
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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