On Thu, 2011-01-06 at 14:49 +0530, jtd wrote:
How does the conditions on which an open licence is based change with a country?
I have not really gone into this. I did note that CC tries to give country specific licenses. One possible use case would be a country that prohibits export of a particular category of software beyond it's borders (and makes it a criminal offence). One would need a few extra clauses in the license to deal with this.
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I cannot really answer the stuff below because I do not understand it. Can you clarify:
One might note that, much of M$ problem creation capabilities arose from the freedom granted by BSD (or similiar licenced) code.
what do you mean by 'problem creation capabilities'?
Most of the embedded device makers were (and are) making merry with gpl (and bsd) code. Several have been brought to book because of the gpl.
most of them have not been caught yet! and I do not understand what this has to do with the points that I am raising.
That the only thing that might yet save JAVA is the GPL
save JAVA from what?
One might note that with the sale of Novell's patents, GPLV3 like terms seems to be the only option for all other non BSDish open licences.
what does this mean?
Much of your arguments (except one) is about (1) expecting others to behave
huh? who am I expecting to behave? and behave how?
and (2) the assumption that an improvment is not desired by the original developer.
where did I make that assumption - I am on record saying that a major motivation for open sourcing code is the hope that people will step in improve the software.
I fail to see how (1) holds in the light of the above list. The whole point of opening your code is the desire for improvment, so proposing (2) as an argument against gpl seems rather strange.
I haven't proposed this
The exception is BSD not benefiting from literal copying of gpl code. Note that reading and reimplementing gpl code is a viable alternative,
are we allowed to do that? I wanted to port RT to python/django, but I saw GPL and was discouraged. If you can certify that I can do this and license it under BSD I will be forever grateful to you
particularly because much of gpl code is incremental improvements, especially if it is derived from BSD, or when bsd code is folded into gpl.
I have news for you - most open source code is incremental improvements - the methodology that is proven to be successful. This is methodology and has nothing to do with license.
I am quite sure that most foss developers are not anti BSD either,
cool - are you among their number?
except for the major irritant of having to reverse engineer closed derivative works.
be clear on one thing - I personally feel that writing closed source code is immoral and evil, I campaign against it - but unfortunately closed source software has not yet been added in the schedule prohibited substances in relevant anti trafficking laws.