El Mon, 2 Aug 2010 15:20:06 +0800 Edwin Eyan Moragas <e...@yndy.org> escribi=C3=B3: > Hi Alex, all, >=20 > On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Alexander Burger > <a...@software-lab.de> wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > as this discussion popped up recently and in the past, and will > > surely pop up in the future: What do you think if PicoLisp were > > released under the BSD license instead of GPL? >=20 > i go for BSD. >=20 > > > > My reason for asking this is simple: On several occasions I > > experienced that the acceptance of PicoLisp is limited by the GPL. > > Companies are reluctant to use it because they are afraid of being > > forced to publish their little secrets. Their fear is sometimes > > rational and sometimes not, but the effects are the same. For me it > > is critical, as my economic survival depends on it. >=20 > the way i understand it (from reading all of the pros and cons posts > of GPL vs BSD over the net for quite some time) is that the GPL forces > you to publish changes when you want to distribute the code outside of > the company. the most clear statement i have read somewhere tells me > "the GPL is a distribution license". i think that captures the spirit > of the GPL. or most of it. >=20 Like you said, the GPL is a distribution license, it only applies when the code is distributed, it does not force you to *publish* the changes or absolutely _anything_, it forces you to give the changes to the *recipient* of the modified binaries, which most of the time will be the same company anyway (a datacenter move for example).
Pico's architecture doesn't seem very ready for embedding, but if you alex want to go in that direction, i'd suggest LGPL for the interpreter code, as Guile uses. Or in any way right now, LGPL or BSD for the standard library, to prevent linking issues that could arise as Edwin pointed out earlier. I could add too, a BSD implementation of the PLIO (that i'm coding myself right now) > > > > Ideologically, I prefer the GPL. It guarantees that "freedom" > > propagates. But it does this by cutting down on freedom, so it is > > schizophrenic. I used to compare the situation with freedom in a > > society: A society should not give an individual member so much > > freedom that he can make himself a dictator and thus destroy > > freedom. But this comparison is wrong. Using free software in a > > non-free project doesn't decrease its freedom; it just doesn't > > increase it the way the GPL tries to enforce. So is this just much > > ado about nothing? >=20 > this is a complex issue and i am not an expert. my additional > arguments would be: >=20 > 1) the BSD license does not force one to publish changes. good for > companies. the GPL does not enforce this too *unless* you distribute > your changes to pre-existing GPL code. >=20 > 2) the BSD license still ensures that the code remains free. the GPL > does not guarantee that changes in the pre-existing code will be made > publicly available (see point 1). >=20 The BSD doesn't guarantee that either, in fact BSD never guarantees that the changes will go back. > 3) the GPL is complex. so many ifs. i'm not keen on using complex > things. In that one i agree, the GPL is a huge legal document, and as such so many people don't read it before talking about it. >=20 > best regards, >=20 > eyan >=20 > PS: > hat tip to Alex for PicoLisp and bringing this issue up in the list. Cheers, Jos=C3=A9 -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
