Too much licenses will be kill Free Software [LWN.net]

Too much licenses will be kill Free Software

Posted Sep 29, 2002 21:45 UTC (Sun) by Gnulix (guest, #1399)
In reply to: Too much licenses will be kill Free Software by adulau
Parent article: OSI approves two new licenses

So why to create new licenses ? The GNU GPL

Perhaps because some people are unwilling to support the FSF, directly or indirectly... Although I like the idea of my software being available for anyone to use and improve - I don't like the idea of RMS being able to hijack and/or take credit for my work, just because I've used the FSF's license or some GNU tools during my development. Everything released under the GPL isn't part of the GNU project, no matter what RMS claims...

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Too much licenses will be kill Free Software

Posted Sep 30, 2002 4:03 UTC (Mon) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

RMS doesn't claim that all software covered by the GPL is part of the GNU project. I don't think I have ever heard him claim that.

The use of FSF licenses or FSF copyrighted build tools also does not affect your ownership of your work. In cases where the GPL may be a bit unclear (such as for gcc), clarrifications to the licenses are included with the package to make the intentions clear.

Too much licenses will be kill Free Software

Posted Sep 30, 2002 21:45 UTC (Mon) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

The use of FSF licenses or FSF copyrighted build tools also does not affect your ownership of your work. In cases where the GPL may be a bit unclear (such as for gcc), clarrifications to the licenses are included with the package to make the intentions clear.

I wish there were some way to make this point clearer. There are company lawyers out their advising their employers to steer clear of the GNU development tools for exactly this reason - just to be on the safe side, perhaps.

I have looked at the gcc source just to verify the matter, and sure enough, libgcc1.c and libgcc2.c (the parts you would link into your program) explicitly give you unlimited distribution rights. Similar provisions are made for things like the Bison parser skeletons and the autoconf support files. It is obviously the intent of the developers not to trap you by the use of their tools (which I would consider a bait & switch tactic). But I can understand how a lawyer, who does not have the necessary background to know which bits of a program are included in its output, would be reluctant to state unequivocally that these tools are indeed "safe from GPL-pollution".

It would be nice if these tools would come with an obvious and short README that details the effort that has been made to prevent such "pollution" - and directs readers to the specific source files affected. Then, at least, a lawyer can quickly see the intent of the developer, and, at the very least, can be confident of a "bad faith" defense.