Hugo Roy <[email protected]> wrote: > + 2014-02-09 Sun 16:04, Fabian Keil <[email protected]>: > > > > First, there's no such thing as a “viral” free software license. > > > > You may not like the term, but this doesn't mean that it doesn't > > exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_license > > It's not that I don't like the term. It's a term that is not > accurate, but it's misguided, ill-informed and backed by FUD from > Microsoft. > > And you are right only on this: not liking the term does not mean > it does not exist. But it's true the other way around: not liking > it does not mean such a thing as a viral license exists either. > > Now, have a look at the wikipedia article: it's of poor quality, > it says: “This article relies on references to primary sources. > Please add references to secondary or tertiary sources. (December > 2011)” has a couple of "citation needed" and has a prominent > section “Criticism of the term” taking almost 1/3 of the whole > article. You cannot miss the fact that most references in this > article are about Microsoft statement from early 2000s. > > So you are actually making my point stronger: > > Do not use this term, because you are not making yourself a favour > by using this term, you are only discrediting what you are saying.
I understand your point of view, but I don't share it. > > > Second, this is not about whether people prefer BSD/MIT-style > > > licenses or (A/L)GPL-style. This is about assigning your copyright > > > to an entity in a way that makes it possible for that entity to > > > decide on their own if they want to release as proprietary > > > software or not something that include your contribution. > > > > This doesn't require copyright assignment, though. The same can > > and does happen with what you refer to as liberal licenses. > > Yes, and so? I don't understand your point. What we are talking > about here is *copyright assignment*, nothing else. > > > > It may > > > very well be possible that the whole is never released as Free > > > Software at all, whether under a liberal license or under a > > > protective license. > > > > Again, this doesn't require copyright assignment. > > And so, what's your point? My point is that in case of permissive licenses the licensee is already free to reuse the software as part of a proprietary product and thus doesn't need copyright assignment. > Copyright assignments are done for other reasons. You are the one > who were confused about this in your former email, I actually understand and understood the differences between copyright assignments and licenses. > > Even Matthew Garret only seems to be concerned about copyleft > > licenses (and how Canonical defends the CLA): > > > | ... Canonical ship software under the GPLv3 family of licenses > > | (GPL, AGPL and LGPL) but require that contributors sign an agreement > > | that permits Canonical to relicense their contributions under a > > | proprietary license. This is a fundamentally different situation > > | to almost all widely accepted CLAs, and it's disingenuous for > > | Canonical to defend their CLA by pointing out the broad community > > | uptake of, for instance, the Apache CLA. > > http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/29160.html > > From the paragraph you're quoting, I can only state that you seem > to have a complete misunderstanding about the subject. > > You're saying that the above paragraph means that Garret is > concerned about copyleft; whereas if you read the statement by > Garret you will see that there's a sentence about copyleft, and > then there's "*but*" about CLAs. The criticism is *not about > copyleft*, it's about Canonical's CLA (copyright assignment). I agree that Garret is not criticising copyleft licenses. He states that the CLA allows Canonical to use code in proprietary products and that this is a problem for software under copyleft licences (as they don't allow this already). He does not state that this is a problem for free software in general (as liberal licenses already allow the reuse in proprietary products anyway). Alas, the newsletter said: | If you value software freedom, FSFE recommends you not to sign | agreements which make it possible to distribute your code under | non-free licenses. It did not say: | If you feel strongly about your copyleft code not being used in | proprietary products, FSFE recommends that you do not sign | agreements that make it possible to distribute your code under | non-free licenses. The latter makes sense to me (even if it's somewhat obvious), while the former seems to imply that there's a conflict between valueing software freedom and allowing the reuse of code in proprietary products. Fabian
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