On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 9:12 AM, Thomas Davie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Now I have fairly strong feelings about freedom of code and I >> everything I release is either under GPL or LGPL. What I like about >> those licenses is it protects freedom in a way that I think it should >> and it forces a sort of reciprocity which resonates very well with my >> selfishness. Re-licensing code under BSD is not something I'm willing >> to do without something that compensates for that reciprocity, and I >> can think of several kinds of compensation here but they all pretty >> much boil down to either fame or fortune. ;-) > > Sorry, this isn't the most relevant comment to the discussion, but I thought > I'd add my own thought re the gpl/lgpl. My personal feeling is that the > point of open source is to allow people the freedom to do what they want > with a piece of code. The GPL/LGPL go completely against this idea, in that > they restrict what I can do with the code to only things that are similarly > licensed. > > I've seen this cause problems even in environments where there's no > commercial gain to be had. Take for example the zfs file system. Sun have > been kind enough to completely open source it. Unfortunately, linux users > can never hope for stable version that works in the kernel, simply because > the GPL stipulates that zfs must be relicensed to do so. > > That's my 2p's worth on why I use the BSD license over the GPL. In short, > the GPL does not promote freedom, it promotes restrictions, just not the > restrictions we've grown to hate from most companies.
You are completely right, both that the comment is a bit off-topic and in point. It can be argued that the (L)GPL is restrictive. However, I fall on the side of "the freedom to take something free and make it proprietary is not a freedom worth protecting". Also, I'm a selfish bastard ;-) /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus@therning.org Jabber: magnus@therning.org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe
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