On Saturday, October 22, 2011 21:44:54 Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 10/22/11, Sean Kelly <sean@invisibleduck.org> wrote:
> > I don't like either one, because having the letters "GPL" in a license name is an automatic hands-off from legal in every company I've ever worked.
> What about Qt, have any of those companies used it?

If a company is going to use Qt, then they pay for the commercial license and it's not an issue.

- Jonathan M Davis

Even the two clause BSD annoys me because of this:

"Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."

It strikes me as empty vanity.

It's annoying as it means a pass through the documentation team for distributed software, but whatever.  At least it's usable. Personally, my favorite is the Boost license, and I'm just about to the point where I don't even care about source code attribution for my own work.

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 22, 2011, at 2:51 PM, "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote:

> Even the two clause BSD annoys me because of this:
> 
> "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."
> 
> It strikes me as empty vanity.

"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote in message news:j7vdt1$2r48$1@digitalmars.com...
> Even the two clause BSD annoys me because of this:
>
> "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."
>
> It strikes me as empty vanity.

Note that (as I read it) MIT is the same way, but just implicitly so: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

But I agree it's annoying, and I'm fearful of accidentally forgetting to comply. In fact that's one of the main reasons I favor zlib/libpng over BSD and MIT (the other reasons being that zlib/libpng is easier to read, and zlib/libpng has "no misrepresentation" clauses).

"Steve Teale" <steve.teale@britseyeview.com> wrote in message news:j7v048$1ut1$1@digitalmars.com...
> I'd never seen it before - maybe I lead a sheltered life.
>
> GPL: "Free as in Herpes"
>
> Doesn't that just hit the nail on the head.

Indeed, I have always thought of GPL'd code similarly (think leprosy). I don't want to touch it, see it, or get near it and I don't want to be around other people who have either, for I don't want my pristine, virgin code to become infected. Maybe someday there will be a cure for GPL and those who have been exposed/infected can then be free of the taint put upon them.

On Sat, 2011-10-22 at 19:02 +0000, Steve Teale wrote:
> >> 
> >> GPL: "Free as in Herpes"
> >> 
> >> Doesn't that just hit the nail on the head.
> > 
> > 
> > Not in my view.  I like the GPL and especially the LGPL.
> 
> But your leaning toward LGPL says something ;=)

Certainly:  That the world of dynamic linking is slightly different from that of static linking.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Sat, 2011-10-22 at 21:06 +0200, Mirko Pilger wrote:
> > GPL: "Free as in Herpes"
> 
> personally i prefer bsd style licenses but the gpl has its right to exist. and while bsd ensures freedom for developers, the gpl is more targeted at users. it's a kind of politic statement and i understand the gnu project as an "user rights moverment".
> 
> please let this thread not turn into another bsd vs gpl flame war.

Agreed.

However, I think your characterization of the licences is not right. All the BSD, MIT, etc. licences are about ensuring that anyone can do anything with the code.  This ensures that no-one can stop people using it.  GPL is about stopping organizations taking code proprietary.

There is definitely a political element to this, but itn't this about not allowing volunteer effort to be exploited by organization for financial gain without returning back to the community that generated the original material.  I guess the question is whether it is morally and ethically defensible for organizations to use material generated in the FOSS context for profit without some form of "pay back" as a "quid pro quo".

I disagree that this is to do with developers and users, it is to do with proprietary vs. non-proprietary and the relationship between them.

The Java community seem to focus on the ASL 2.0 as their preferred licence with LGPL actually being the only main option:  GPL is not usable in this context.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Sat, 2011-10-22 at 12:29 -0700, Sean Kelly wrote:
> I don't like either one, because having the letters "GPL" in a license name is an automatic hands-off from legal in every company I've ever worked.

I think this may be right pragmatically, but is it simply that lawyers for these companies have a knee-jerk reaction of panic whenever the GPL is mentioned.  There are clearly situations and uses for which GPL code simply cannot be used in an organization creating proprietary code, but to have a blanket statement of "no GPL code" is actually to cut the organization off from a huge resource that can be used to generate profit and still play fair with the FOSS community.

Having written the previous email and the above, it occurs to me that we should stop seeing this as a FOSS vs proprietary war where one must win at the expense of the other, and ask the question how can both be nice to each other so that proprietary makes money and they and FOSS interwork together appropriately.  Clearly Microsoft will not be involved in this collaborative atmosphere, given their historical statements, but they should not be seen as thought leaders here.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On 2011-10-22 21:44, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 10/22/11, Sean Kelly<sean@invisibleduck.org>  wrote:
>> I don't like either one, because having the letters "GPL" in a license name
>> is an automatic hands-off from legal in every company I've ever worked.
>
> What about Qt, have any of those companies used it?

Qt is available under GPL, LGPL and commercial license.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Sat, 2011-10-22 at 16:55 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
[ . . . ]

I wonder if there is a problem of old uninformed opinion from ages back becoming accepted fact due to it being promulgated as fact over and over again?

> Even ignoring the viral nature, the "hundred page wall of legalese" alone is enough to make me very, very nervous about going anywhere near it (same goes for creative commons). Not to mention the thousand different versions of [L]GPL.

I agree that the GPL is an irritatingly long document, but it is uniquely trying to do something that the other licences are not, so it is worth giving some leaway on that.

There is only one GPL v3 and only one LGPL v3, there are no different versions of the (L)GPL just the official ones.  People who start fiddling with "classpath variations" etc. are not using the LGPL.

It funny how when it comes to licences, viral is used as a derogatory term, but when used in marketing, viral is a positive goal that everyone wants to achieve.

> But I find those issues extremely frustrating, because there's two things I do like about GPL:
> 
> - From what I've heard, it bans usage in the creation of closed/proprietary platforms and devices. (I've come to have a enormous seething hatred for such things. Absolutely fed up with them.) I'm sure I could make a derivative of zlib/libpng/etc. that adds such a prohibition clause, but that would kick it out of the "OSI-approved" category, and would probably create a bit of a PR problem. (Plus I imagine I'd probably need to hire a lawyer to make sure it would actually work as intended.)

This is indeed one of the goals of GPL and LGPL, and since the Tivo incident prompted the creation of GPLv3, it is well handled by the language Eben Moglen et al. introduced.  Of course Linux remains GPLv2 so is still open to "tivoization".

This is why I like GPL and LGPL, it stop organizations stealing FOSS generated work and using it for their own gain, without any responsibility to "give back" in some way that the FOSS community finds constructive and supportive.

> - Dual-licensing software under both GPL and paid-proprietary is feasable. I've never been able to think of a way to do the same with something more free like zlib/libpng/BSD/MIT/etc, and I think about that a lot. The only ways to get paid with those seems to be donations (would that ever even earn enough for a pizza? and are there any realistic options besides FraudPal *cough* I mean PayPal?) and paid support (which isn't always particularly applicable to every program; not everythng really needs much support).

Qt has made positive gains from GPL/proprietary dual licencing by switching from GPL to LGPL.  This allows use by proprietary systems of an LGPL library.  Sadly PyQt fell into the pit of not switching from GPL to LGPL for their adapter from Python to the Qt libraries.  Hence PySide which is LGPL.

It never ceases to amaze me that "being business friendly" has become a phrase for "allows business to steal FOSS work for profit" and conned the FOSS community into thinking this is a good thing!

I feel it is important to have a way for proprietary systems to use FOSS software by linking to it hence I like LGPL where GPL can be a problem.


-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder