Sense!

Sense!

Posted Jun 5, 2008 3:55 UTC (Thu) by mheily (guest, #27123)
In reply to: Nonsense! by Felix_the_Mac
Parent article: Open Source Software Shows Its Muscle (Law.com)

The "Linux ecosystem" is more diverse than you realize, and does not depend on one single licensing model.

I'm guessing you are a Linux user, so let's assume you are running a "typical" Linux desktop (if there is such a thing). You are probably running Firefox, which is licensed under the MPL. You are probably running Gnome, which is LGPL. Firefox, Gnome, and all your other graphical programs run under the X Window System (X.org) which is MIT licensed.

So your desktop environment is mostly non-GPL software, what about the LWN web site you are visiting? The custom front-end code is written in Python, which is released under the Python license. The custom code runs inside a web application framework named Quixote, which also uses the Python license. Underneath all this Python code is an Apache webserver, which is under the Apache license. The database that stores all this interesting LWN content is running under PostgreSQL, which is BSD licensed.

All of the licenses I just mentioned are in the BSD family of licenses and lack the viral qualities of the GPL. If this offends you, maybe you should create a new Linux distribution with only GPL-licensed code. Rip out Firefox, Gnome, and X Windows, and then you can work at the console and use Lynx to browse the web. What would be a good name for this new GNU/Linux distribution? Hmmmm... how about calling it gNonSense!

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> All of the licenses I just mentioned are in the BSD family of licenses and lack the viral
qualities of the GPL.

Those "viral qualities" are exactly the qualities that those who choose the GPL are selecting
for. You might not like that, but sneaking in anti-GPL campaigning under the guise of
recommending against licence proliferation is just plain dishonest.

You seem to have forgotten KDE (GPL-licensed), perhaps because it 
torpedoes your ridiculous, hopeless attempt to get everyone to not use the 
single most popular family of free software licenses in existence.

(Why yes, your comments *do* reek of bias.)

Your claim that the LGPL is not a GPL-family license is also extremely 
silly, and leaves you with basically no argument.