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 18:31 UTC (Fri) by QuisUtDeus (guest, #14854)
Parent article: ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet)

What is missed in ESR's remark is that big companies may someday want to take old/abandoned code (or new code by a resource-strapped developer) released under GPL and make proprietary versions of them.

Maybe ESR thinks this a good thing (since the code gets developed somehow, if not as open source).

By the time a project is large enough to compete head-to-head with new forks, big or small, the choice of license has long before been made.

How many big, thriving open-source projects would have gotten that far without the GPL to protect their early efforts? One could argue that it is a sign of the fitness/goodness of the GPL that there are indeed many large, active projects released under the GPL.

Could it be that the failure of the BSD-related systems to enjoy growth comparable to Linux (even now, after the fame of Linux has brought more attention to them) is due in part to their not using the GPL? If a developer wants to write code and give it away, will he want other companies to derive profit from it without him?

(Log in to post comments)

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

Posted Jul 2, 2005 6:07 UTC (Sat) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link]

> Could it be that the failure of the BSD-related systems to enjoy growth comparable to Linux (even now, after the fame of Linux has brought more attention to them) is due in part to their not using the GPL?

Probably, but another reason is that Linux became available about half a year before 386BSD (the first complete unencumbered BSD kernel), and even then there was the USL vs. UCB lawsuit which went on for several years.

However, for the same reason that proprietary forks of BSD-licensed code are possible, so are GPL forks. If an unencumbered BSD kernel had been released before Linux, maybe there would have been a GPL fork of it which would have gone on to be more popular than Linux. (Well, it would have had to have been GPL+exception to accomodate the advertising clause, similar to the GnomeMeeting license.)