On Sep 26, 2003, at 12:46 PM, Russell Nelson wrote:


Sean Chittenden writes:
The GPL interferes with the creation of proprietary software.

Correct, which is what I object to and why I created the OSSAL. Businesses using OSSAL software would give the business the ability to create proprietary software, even though the non-core parts are most likely open and available to the public.

That's really perverse, Sean. Pretend that the GPL is a proprietary license for software distributed by the FSF. Let's say that this business (the FSF) takes a piece of BSD-licensed software, makes even a trivial modification, and licenses it under their proprietary license (the GPL). The software leaves the realm of software modifiable by you, or anyone else who wants to make proprietary changes. You say this is bad, but it's exactly the same thing that happens when any other company does the same thing. Why do you want your license to discriminate against the FSF?

It sounds to me like Sean really wants to avoid the emergence of a alternative, viable Open Source fork of his project under the GPL. That is, he is less concerned about what happens to the code per se, and more concerned about the -community- being split by having two interesting public code bases under different licenses. Particularly if the interesting stuff starts happening under a GPL license, and ends up obsoleting the original (BSD) codebase.


Is that correct, Sean?

I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, or even a valid concern in general, but I think it is at least a coherent position.

-- Ernie P.


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