On Nov 4, 2008, at 11:37 AM, Matthias Benkard wrote:

>
> On Nov 4, 1:35 pm, Rich Hickey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> So far, you are only the third person to complain about lack of GPL
>> compatibility.
>
> For the sake of balance, I _am_ actually concerned about the CPL
> because it effectively denies developers the freedom to be politically
> unneutral.
>
> Let's say I want to write a library that may only be used by free
> software, out of political reasons.  (That should be okay, right?
> It's my code, after all.)  The natural license choice in this case is
> the GPL, which is widely used and makes my new library compatible with
> all the other GPL-compatibly licensed stuff out there.
>
> The CPL doesn't allow me to choose the GPL.

You've got this completely backwards - the GPL doesn't allow you to  
combine with certain things, whereas the CPL is fine with it.

>  Instead, it forces me to
> apply a CPL-compatible, GPL-like license -- a thing which may or may
> not currently exist, but which will certainly make my library useless
> to almost everybody because without GPL compatibility, it in turn
> forces a non-GPL-compatible license onto my library's users, who will
> probably want to make use of GPL-licensed libraries as well as mine.

Completely untrue - the CPL makes no requirements whatsoever on  
libraries with which it is combined. The problem lies with GPL.

>
> If it was only about Clojure, it wouldn't be so bad, since because of
> the license conflict, there can't be any GPL-licensed Clojure
> libraries out there.  But it's not just Clojure -- it's about all of
> the Java ecosystem.
>
> That's also why your suggestion to ask the authors of a GPL'd library
> to LGPL it seems to me a bit unrealistic.  After all, the authors
> probably released the library under the GPL out of political reasons,
> so they're unlikely to hamper their political motives by changing the
> license.

Then they (and their consumers) have to live with the effects of the  
choices they make and not blame others for making different choices.

>
>
> Therefore, by choosing the CPL, you're making a political statement
> against a sizable part of the Free Software movement.  This ought not
> to be done without thorough consideration, I think.
>

I'm not making any statement. Some people who choose the GPL end up  
with restrictions about which they are unhappy.  LGPL and classpath  
exceptions exist for a reason.

Rich


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