On Thursday 06 January 2011 12:49:40 Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
the *nix view is to have many small tools - each tool does only one thing and does it well. The doze view is to have one giant tool that does everything. Each type of software is different, and a license that suits one type will not suit another - also a license that is good for one country may not be good for another.
How does the conditions on which an open licence is based change with a country?
right you are. I for one am not actually anti-gpl. I have many good friends who use the GPL and I respect their choice and also I feel that things like iptables and such stuff are best GPLed or put under some restrictive license. What I am opposing here is the GPLwalas who think that everything (including their pseudo open source wares) should be GPLed. That the GPL is the be all and end all of open source development. And who sneer at all other licenses and gleefully predict doom if one uses one of them.
One might note that, much of M$ problem creation capabilities arose from the freedom granted by BSD (or similiar licenced) code. 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. That the only thing that might yet save JAVA is the GPL 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.
Much of your arguments (except one) is about (1) expecting others to behave and (2) the assumption that an improvment is not desired by the original developer.
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.
The exception is BSD not benefiting from literal copying of gpl code. Note that reading and reimplementing gpl code is a viable alternative, 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 am quite sure that most foss developers are not anti BSD either, except for the major irritant of having to reverse engineer closed derivative works.