Hi, As promised, I've written up an "ASL vs. GPL" page, for possible inclusion on jakarta-site2. I've more tried to capture the spirit of the thing from the Apache POV, than duplicate the detailed arguments in the O'Reilly article referenced at the end.
Please vote on whether you think the reasons outlined here are sufficiently representative. Constructive criticism and change suggestions welcome. If sufficiently approved of, I'll XMLify it and submit a patch. --Jeff Why prefer the ASL to a copyleft license (eg GPL)? -------------------------------------------------- This is an slightly distasteful topic for most Apache developers. The license is simply not a central part of the Apache philosophy. Apache is about creating communities that create great software. The ASL is a minimum legal necessity that allows us to do this, nothing more. It promotes no political axe-grinding, and has no great philosophy that needs defending. The ASL, in fact, presents such a small conversational target that any licensing debate inevitably becomes "what is wrong with license X". That inevitably leads to misunderstandings, holy wars and bad feeling, It's not productive, and not fun, and why we find licensing debates distasteful. In particular, it's not fun rubbishing the GPL. The reader is encouraged to read the GNU's philosophy pages (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/). It is wonderful, high-minded stuff that most programmers instantly resonate with. Opposing RMS's vision of Free Software at first seems to be like kicking a puppy. But let's kick it anyway. It turns out that the puppy soon grows up to be a bulldog, biting and tenaciously hanging on to any code it can. Due to the GPL's extensive scope and 'viral' linking rules, GPL'ed code cannot be incorporated into proprietary software. It must all be copylefted, or none of it can be. In many cases, we at Apache find the GPL's virality a hindrance in *our* goal: creating communities that create code. This is because large parts of our "community" are selling custom solutions, not shrink-wrapped products sold in volume for general consumption. Essentially, selling software-based services, not software. When you're selling a service, releasing the code makes no sense to *anyone*. The code is mostly customer- or sector-specific, so is not reusable, and of little interest to fellow developers. The customer *certainly* doesn't want you publicising their code, breaking confidentiality agreements and potentially exposing security flaws to the world. Thus, to adopt a copyleft license like the GPL would alienate the service-oriented portion of our community. We want the widest possible audience, not for "market share", but because the diverse input results in software with "hybrid vigour", wide applicability and the kind of tough-as-nails quality we strive for. Thus, we encourage users to adopt non-copyleft licenses like the ASL for "everyday" code, as it increases the chances of code sharing and cooperation, ultimately leading to better software. For further information, please refer to the well-researched and well-written O'Reilly article entitled "Working Without Copyleft", at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2001/12/12/transition.html A good general reference of open source licenses is Bruce Perens' book "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution" at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/perens.html -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
