ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Jul 1, 2005 17:51 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065)
Parent article: ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet)

There are some potential logic faults here. One of which is that not all
projects are actively maintained -- sometimes there's just not much of a
development community left. I've personally seen this and it's a problem
even if the GPL is used. If the copyright holder's can't be found, the
license terms can't be enforced. Another is the fact the GPL is so widely
used it is a standard. You can move code between GPLed projects with ease
and minimal worry. You don't have to worry about strange unbalanced rights
like created by many of the corporate GPL replacements. I know that I have
to really consider things much more carefully before modifying non-GPLed
software (and in some cases decided not to).

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Bruce is right.

Posted Jul 3, 2005 12:57 UTC (Sun) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

We don´t need ESR anymore. Look at the "huge success" in marketing and
development momentum the BSDs are. Heh. No offense to the BSD crowd, but
they are only "in the map" IMHO because of the great deal of GPLd software
that was available some time ago... including, and mainly GCC, which is
the toolchain to make *every* one of them. Pfff. Nothing to see here.

ESR and his "Open Source" thing was needed at a certain point to un-scare
all the enterprises, but nowadays, any sane PHB will just go after IBM :-)

Bruce is right.

Posted Jul 20, 2005 13:37 UTC (Wed) by armijn (subscriber, #3653) [Link]

Conveniently forgetting that early Linux distributions made heavy use of
the BSD tools, until there was a GNU replacement. So you could say that
Linux is on the map because of the great deal of BSD licensed software that was available in the beginning of Linux.