LWN: Comments on "The GPL and license infection"

The GPL and license infection

erwbgy — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 21:42:41 +0000

I agree that the FSF's intention is to induce copyright owners to free their software by tempting them with existing free code, but he didn't use the word induce. He implied that the goal is to force a program to become open source, which is not true.

The GPL and license infection

giraffedata — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 21:06:04 +0000

I have to agree with Epstein more than LWN about the intent of GPL.

It is more than apparent to me that the FSF's goal is to get publishers to liberate their code, not to sue publishers for damages and collect royalties.

Epstein does not suggest that a court would order source code released, or that those who license code under GPL intend for a court to do so.

If the GPL resulted only in authors of free software winning lawsuits and collecting royalties, I'm sure RMS would consider the movement a failure.

So yes, the apparent intent of the GPL viral clause is to induce a copyright owner of a new program to open source his stuff too. Not force him -- just tempt him with the offer of royalty-free use of some code.

The GPL and license infection

jre — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 18:38:09 +0000

Alert readers may have paid special note to the following:

The movement, whose principles have been expertly analysed by James DeLong of the Progress and Freedom Foundation ...

Ah, yes -- the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Now, where do you suppose they get their funding?

You suppose correctly.

Prof. Epstein appears to belong to the closed circle of GPL-attackers funded covertly or openly by Microsoft.
Fortunately for the rest of us, they tend to quote each other so extensively as to blow their respective covers.

See Tim Lambert's superb investigative post for a list of the usual suspects.

The less calloused among us may also be irritated by the distinguished professor's misuse of the phrase begs the question.
But perhaps we should cut him some slack. He may have gone to the same classes as Ken "not the sharpest pencil" Brown.

The GPL and license infection

janneke — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 09:44:25 +0000

This disappointing Financial Times article has been more than adequately refuted by commenters on LWN and many other places.

Which means that the converted have been silenced maybe, but have the actual readers of the article had a reasonable chance of recognising how bad the article was?