Similar in spirit? [LWN.net]

Similar in spirit?

Posted Oct 5, 2006 8:54 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: Similar in spirit? by dlang
Parent article: Similar in spirit?

Generally speaking it seems that the license choices of the major contributors are respected even if the license can be 'upgraded' to the GPL.

Look at the large number of BSD-licensed software. A major example is PostgreSQL. If there is any peice of software poised for a 'GPL Takover' then that one would be one! But I don't think I've ever heard of anybody trying to 'take over' PostgreSQL with a GPL'd license (although I am sure that it's used in inumerable propriatory products).

There are numerious projects on non-copyleft licenses like zlib and such.

Also don't forget that the GPLv3 is due for a few more revisions before it gets out there. People are all excited right now because it's new and the debates help people figure out what is going on. (I know it helps me a lot)

I think that if the majority of the people in a GPLv2 or later project want it to remain GPLv2 or later then I think that most of them will be fine.

*shrug*

I think the majority of the fights are going to be with people who have "GPLv2 only" style licenses. These people usually had a reason to distrust the FSF/RMS stuff and while the "GPLv2 and later" crowd have little problem integrating with GPLv3 code from other projects (probably all it would take would be a nice email for permission to GPlv2 the code)..

the "GPLv2 only" people will probably end up with huge fights when people try to take them to "GPLv2 or later" for "better compatability" with other programs. The original people that choose the license in the first place will probably perceive it as a underhanded attempt to take their project to GPLv3.. while the other side of the internal project debate will want to see the project gain compatability with GPLv3 code rather then risk going of into irrelevency. (definately not talking about the Linux kernel here, it has it's own special rules)

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