GPLv3 & additional permissions/restrictions [LWN.net]

GPLv3 & additional permissions/restrictions

Posted Sep 26, 2006 23:44 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: GPLv3 & additional permissions/restrictions by smoogen
Parent article: Some GPLv3 clarifications from the FSF

"One License to rule them all, One License to find them,
One License to bring them all and in the FSF bind them."

Isn't that what Microsoft says is going to happen?

You guys are nuts. It seems that your are on a anti-GPLv3 rampage and are refusing to look at it objectively or completely fail to understand how the GPLv2 works right now!

The GPL is the 'lowest common demominator' in a Linux based system.

When all software is GPL-compatable then that means something to the end users. This is very attractive and it means that everything is 'Free' software. Sure there are licenses that are not GPL compatable and are free, but for each one of those it causes huge headaches.

Could you imagine if everything was based on the MPL, for instance?

I've seen projects that are using Mozilla stuff that have closed portions of the program, they have other portions of the source code which you can't use if your doing something the original author politically incorrect, then they have other portions you are only allowed to use for non-commercial purposes unless your a paticular company. All these incompatable and conflicting licenses in a single work of software. It's hugely distructive.

A program like that has no future.

People have perfectly good Free software licenses in their code right now that are GPL-incompatable but are acceptable by most people. It's a pain in the neck for distributers like Debian or Redhat to sometimes deal with the fact that although they are using Free software it is incompatable with the 70% of the rest of the operating system that is using the LGPL (sure they can link, but they can't be used in those libs) or GPL.

Now with GPLv3 many more of them will be compatable and cause much less headaches for end users and distributers.. And now people are accusing the drafters of GPLv3 in attempting to 'steal' code from these other projects and turn them all into FSF controlled software?

I have news for you.. This is exactly how the GPLv2 operates and it has been very very successfull. Insanely successfull... and the vast majority of those projects which currently use GPL-compatable licenses are still completely outside the control of FSF, GNU, RMS, and friends.

What your saying is FUD.

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