LK2008: The values of the Linux community [LWN.net]

LK2008: The values of the Linux community

Posted Oct 13, 2008 15:17 UTC (Mon) by lmb (subscriber, #39048)
In reply to: LK2008: The values of the Linux community by rgmoore
Parent article: LK2008: The values of the Linux community

It is a bit more than that. It trumps most other licenses when GPL'ed code becomes embedded into a project. I personally think that "contagious" actually describes the behaviour quite well. Or, if you prefer a better spin, "pervasive" ;-)

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Genetic metaphor

Posted Oct 13, 2008 16:18 UTC (Mon) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (5 responses)

I would describe the GPL as being dominant, while the BSD license (and similar licenses) are recessive. The analogy isn't 100% perfect- real organisms inherit half of each parent's genes, so they have a chance of receiving the recessive gene from a heterozygous parent, while software projects inherit all of their parents' licenses- but it's reasonably close.

I think that it also does a good job of highlighting the philosophical differences between permissive and copyleft licenses. The whole point of permissive, BSD-style licenses is that the code is supposed to be mixable with anything out there. That only works with a recessive license. Copyleft licenses are the exact opposite. Their goal is to be as dominant as possible so that no other license can replace theirs.

Genetic metaphor

Posted Oct 13, 2008 22:31 UTC (Mon) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (3 responses)

Oh, I like that one.

Another space of positive terms to explore: tit-for-tat, fair...

Genetic metaphor

Posted Oct 13, 2008 22:41 UTC (Mon) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

If you want to get into that sphere, I'd call the GPL (and other copyleft licenses) a "share and share alike" license, while the BSD (and other permissive licenses) is a "gift" license.

Genetic metaphor

Posted Oct 14, 2008 9:55 UTC (Tue) by danielpf (guest, #4723) [Link] (1 responses)

What about "equitable" ? It conveys an idea similar to "share and share alike" in one word, without being negative.

Genetic metaphor

Posted Oct 16, 2008 5:04 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

"Mutual" might be another suitable term.

Genetic metaphor

Posted Oct 23, 2008 13:30 UTC (Thu) by anton (subscriber, #25547) [Link]

I would describe the GPL as being dominant, while the BSD license (and similar licenses) are recessive. [...] real organisms inherit half of each parent's genes [...] while software projects inherit all of their parents' licenses.

If you don't take all the code, you only inherit the licenses for the code that you take (which actually might, in some cases, be half of the licenses of each parent).

Moreover, if you, e.g., take only BSD parts from each parent, your resulting software can be distributed under BSD, even if the parents have GPL parts and therefore have to be distributed (as a whole) under the terms of the GPL, just like a recessive trait can show up in a child of two parents expressing a different, dominant trait.

So your analogy is pretty perfect.