On 15 Mai, 04:20, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l...@geek- central.gen.new_zealand> wrote: > In message > <a26e8cac-6561-40f6-ae3f-cfe176ecb...@l31g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, Paul > Boddie wrote: > > Although people can argue that usage of the GPL prevents people from > > potentially contributing because they would not be able to sell > > proprietary versions of the software ... > > It doesn’t prevent them from selling proprietary versions of their own > contributions, any more than any other licence does.
I already mentioned this several days ago, upon which it was regarded as not addressing some complaint or other. You own your own work, but if you release that work to someone and it makes use of a GPL-licensed work, then the user must be able to deal with the work according to the terms of the GPL. > The fact that their contribution may not be much use without the rest of > that GPL’d code is entirely another matter. It was their choice to build on > the work of others; they could have reinvented it from scratch themselves. Yes. I mentioned this before: WebKit (or probably more specifically WebCore) is an example of both originally building on GPL-licensed code, and also building on permissively licensed code. The code specifically belonging to WebKit and its predecessor was never GPL- licensed itself. My point about a platform vendor choosing to undertake the multiple man-year task of rewriting an existing, mature GPL-licensed library purely so that people are then able to sell proprietary software is grounded in the observation that if people were content to make their source code available for their products on such a platform, the GPL would be a satisfactory basis for such activities: they own their own code, can license it permissively (but compatibly with the GPL), and the sources remain available; they don't need a "weaker" copyleft licence or a permissive licence to do any of this. Now, since it is unlikely that a business is going to spend money on a project that doesn't change the situation in any practical sense - that people are content with having their source code available to their users, but now (after several man-years of effort) can link to a permissively licensed (or weak-copyleft licensed) library - the actual motivation emerges for choosing the LGPL or a permissive licence as the basis for the platform's licensing: to permit the only thing that the GPL does not, which is to let people release their software and not commit to offering the source code; to permit, in effect, the delivery of proprietary software. Any claim that a licensing change is needed merely to let people develop open source applications on the platform is dishonest, especially as the "about" page for PySide spells out the licensing objective. Take away the proprietary software requirement and you might as well use the GPL. Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
