Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation [LWN.net]

Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation

Posted Jun 14, 2011 16:45 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953)
In reply to: Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation by rahulsundaram
Parent article: Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation

And more importantly, history has shown that permissive licenses just don't work in some situations. The BSD code was open and free to use under a permissive license. What developed around that same time was not an open and fair system where every worked toward the common good but in fact a closed competitive system where everyone kept their improvements to themselves in the name of competition. Such a system would still exist (and the reinventing of the wheel over and over again) had Linux not been licensed with the GPL. The restrictions in the GPL force cooperation on the community with entities that if given the opportunity would close up and refuse contributions.

IBM even made a public statement that were Linux not GPL they wouldn't contribute for fear competitors would use their work and improve and not give back.

So you might argue permissive is better, but I'll argue the GPL is better because it forces everyone to equal footing. A real study of the issue would be needed, but I'd be willing to bet that in almost all circumstances (yes there are exceptions that IMO are more about timing than license) a GPL project will move along better than a permissively licensed project.

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Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation

Posted Jun 17, 2011 1:14 UTC (Fri) by aristedes (guest, #35729) [Link]

My language might have been too emotive but I'm certainly not arguing copyleft == bad. I would actually suggest that there are stronger reasons to contribute code upstream: that is, few companies can afford to maintain their own fork of (say) Apache httpd, so in fact there are probably few such forks and plenty of contributions to the original project. You don't need to use the law as a stick in every situation.

You argue that IBM does not contribute back to Apache licensed code, but that is just incorrect. They are one of the largest corporate supporters of Apache projects (and there are many more). Yes it is a shame they pulled out of Apache Harmony for strategic/political reasons, but their employees are still to be found all over contributions.

You argue that the BSD projects don't have an open system with people working to a common good. That is quite the reverse of my experience with FreeBSD. Many companies contribute code and their employees' time to FreeBSD.

If you want to study competing projects with different licenses, it would certainly be interesting, but I don't think you can dismiss the entire Ruby/Rails ecosystem (MIT license), the Apache projects, the various BSD projects, and a range of other projects like postgresql as all inferior to their GPL cousins.

I personally contribute to both GPL and Apache/BSD licensed projects. I don't feel that my work on Apache projects somehow represents me being exploited by 'big corporate'.

Apache votes to accept OpenOffice.org for incubation

Posted Jun 17, 2011 2:26 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

"My language might have been too emotive but I'm certainly not arguing copyleft == bad"

You are doing far worse than that. You are ascribing bad motivations to people contributing to copyleft licensed codebases ignoring all the historical reasons and current research on this topic and also making factually incorrect claims about the impact of copyleft licensed codebases on commercial organizations.