On 26/10/13 03:41, em9002 wrote: > You just don't get it, do you? We're pro-GPL here. We like it > because it guarantees freedom for users. That's really all there is > to it.
Permissive licenses do guarantee freedom for users. But what they don't do is prevent the creators of derivative works from imposing additional restrictions on the work. I do see the merits of both styles of licensing. For some projects the fact that a proprietary fork would require a lot of work and also convince users to give up their freedom is enough to make it infeasible. I think Apache httpd is a good example of this, as it is typically used by the more tech-savvy people who perhaps care more about their freedom. But I don't think might be the case for all software. For example, maybe for smaller less-mainstream software it would take less work to produce a successful fork of a free program. Andrew.
