[PLUG] Re: Copyleft bad for open source?

[David Mandel]

Randal,

    I will keep you in mind for a future PLUG meeting.

                                          Sincerely,
                                          David Mandel
                                          Chief Activist
                                          Portland Linux/Unix Group
                                          560 SE Alexander
                                          Corvallis, Oregon 97333
                                          (541) 737-9153 at work (OSU)
                                          (541) 730-5285 cell

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   David Mandel                        http://www.DavidMandel.com
   Portland Linux/Unix Group           http://pdxLinux.org
   LinuxFund                           http://LinuxFund.org
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On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

> >>>>> "David" == David Pool <dpool at hevanet.com> writes:
> 
> David> The Enterprise Open Source Journal recently ran an article entitled
> David> “When Copyleft Is Bad for Open Source” by Mark Driver of Gartner. In it,
> David> Driver makes the proposition that the GPL and other copyleft licenses
> David> are “wrong”, “second class” and possibly against the “ethos of open
> David> source”.
> 
> David> I thought about it for awhile and decided to pen a response:
> 
> David> http://www.news4neighbors.net/article.pl?sid=05/11/28/1732242
> 
> Pulling a slashdot-subscriber here and reading neither the original
> article nor your comment, but simply responding to this brief summary,
> my response would be something like:
> 
> The GPL is great, because it allows people who want a certain kind of
> freedom to safely license their code.
> 
> The BSD license is great, because it allows people who want a certain
> kind of freedom to safely license their code.
> 
> The goals of these two groups overlap, but the distinction has to be
> weighed consciously.  A blind faith to either method means religious
> wars, not sane discussions.
> 
> Also, it's important to understand the consequences of even slight
> changes to the license.  Witness the fiasco of Apache and Xfree86
> changing their licenses slightly... entire user communities ended up
> forking distros just to keep the old licenses.
> 
> I address this issue (and others) in my "Free Software, a look back, a
> look ahead" talk, <http://www.ourmedia.org/node/15118>.  However, the
> slides don't really convey the text that I include on those slides,
> and the notes are only in my head, sorry. :)
> 
> I'd be happy to give that talk at a future PLUG meeting though.
> 
> -- 
> Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
> <merlyn at stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
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> 
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