Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity [LWN.net]

Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity

Posted Jan 26, 2012 18:27 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity by landley
Parent article: Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity

I miss the days when GPLv2 was a viable license for userspace code. I hate the FSF with a fiery passion for taking it away from me.

Because the FSF have forbidden you from using the GPLv2 forevermore!

Oh, wait, they haven't.

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Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity

Posted Jan 26, 2012 20:52 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

It's not that they have forbidden anyone from using the GPLv2 (although they strongly discourage it).

The issue is that they've affected the name "GPL" to the point where _anything_ with GPL in it gets rejected, including LGPL.

Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity

Posted Jan 26, 2012 21:22 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

rejected by whom? If people dont understand GPLv2 and GPLv3 and LGPL are all different licenses, FSF is not responsible for that.

Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity

Posted Jan 26, 2012 21:48 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

rejected by non-technical people who hear the scare stories about the "GPL will cause you to have to give away all your code" nonsense who aren't sure which version of the GPL will cause the problem, they just know that there are problems with using "GPL code" and so don't go any further.

yes, it's silly, and mostly it's a case of management being lazy and not knowing what's going on, but at the same time it's a very real effect.

how much of this is the fault of the FSF? that's harder to say.

the GPLv2 was something that was fairly broadly accepted (still with some FUD, but still with a lot of companies using it). the GPLv3 has split the community, with some people eagerly embracing it, but with many people (including many prominent people) thinking that it goes too far. That makes even companies that accepted the GPLv2 move away from GPL code. Some of it is the 'taint' on the name GPL, but some of it is the fact that much GPLv2 code is GPLv2+ code and companies don't want to get stuck with having the maintain a v2 fork or being trapped by v3 so they look to just avoid it entirely.

Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity

Posted Jan 26, 2012 23:22 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

"split the community"? I hadn't realized that the open source/free software community had a uniform set of positions on licensing before.

Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity

Posted Feb 1, 2012 0:56 UTC (Wed) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link]

yes, it's silly, and mostly it's a case of management being lazy and not knowing what's going on, but at the same time it's a very real effect

And even lawyers who prefer to take the easy side. Specially if the companies are not exactly software companies, management has less knowledge about software. GPlv2+ blurs the line here. At least for smaller companies, these stories just scares them away.