On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 9:43 PM, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, thanks for the reply. > > I have thought about recursive and unfortunately it is not in my opinion > an adequate or equivalent substitute. It may be inoffensive, but it is not > accurate in conveying those properties or characteristics of the GPL. > Something that is recursive generally makes repeated calls to itself. It is > neatly contained and does not propagate outside of itself. Calling a > recursive method does not make the call chain all the way up to main > recursive. The recursive method does its recursion and generally returns > its result back to the caller, ending the recursion. The only thing the > caller receives is the results, not the recursion. > > There are many positive cultural references to something viral or > infect(ious). For something to go viral, depends on what that something is. > She has an infectious smile, or laugh. Even in biology where we get the > term viral. It is not absolutely or always negative. There are things that > scientist attempt to use viral characteristics to do good things. Context > is everything. > > There are no words a GPL proponent could provide which adequately or > otherwise describe the viral characteristic of the GPL that would be > considered positive by a GPL opponent. > > Back to context. > > To a GPL proponent, the viral nature of the GPL is considered a positive > and good thing. It is the primary reason to choose and use the GPL. > > To the GPL opponent, the viral nature of the GPL is considered a negative > and bad thing. It is the primary reason to oppose and to avoid using the > GPL. > > Two side both viewing the same exact thing and understanding it very > differently. One positive, one negative. There is no positive spin for this > aspect of the GPL for someone wishing to avoid that aspect. No matter what > words are chosen. > > For the MIT/BSD person we don't necessarily care if you wish to license > your software under the GPL. What we care is that your software is > expressly and explicitly trying to override our choices and compel us to > become GPL. That is what we don't like. The fact that GPL software is GPL > software in perpetuity is okay. Just leave us alone. But we know that is > not how the GPL works. > > > A perspective occurred to me this morning. The original author of GPL > software is not bound by the GPL. I think this thread has run its course for now, but just a quick clarification here. The above is only true up until they accept the first contribution from another party - so its not a good argument. cheers -ben . > They have freedoms the GPL takes away. They have the freedom to turn their > software into closed source, proprietary software. They have the freedom to > not release all of their modifications. They have the freedom to not infect > all their other software which may use this otherwise GPLd code. They have > freedom to relicense their software. They have many, many freedoms which > the GPL removes from everyone who receives the GPLd software. The original > author of GPL software has for himself MIT like freedoms. > > What we on the MIT/BSD side of things want is for everybody to have all of > the freedoms the original author of the software has. People who receive > our software maintain all freedoms. > > I have seen over the years many GPL licensed projects change to some more > permissive license. Once they did so, the success of the project improved. > They had greater buy in, and an increase in use. It increased the size of > the open source community and an increase in the code base of an open > source project. These are good things. > > Here I will let it rest. I don't know what else can be expressed to help > clarify both sides. > > Jimmie > > > > > > > > On 09/22/2017 03:27 AM, Hilaire wrote: > >> The appropriate and neutral term to describe GPL licence is "recursive". >> >> GPL licence was designed to build a better computing community, where >> freedom is 1st consideration, even at the expense of a lower acceptance. >> >> Hilaire >> >> >> Le 20/09/2017 à 21:30, Jimmie Houchin a écrit : >> >>> So my question to you. What words would you use instead of viral and >>> infection that equally describe that characteristic of the GPL and variants? >>> >> >> > >
