Hello. I have been thinking about all the problems the GPL causes. My solution is a new license called the "Freedom License". Here it is:
THE FREEDOM LICENSE Preamble: What are the problems with the GPL and how does this new license solve them? Many experienced software developers know about the GPL and the BSD style Licenses (apache, bsd, mozilla, cddl etc). The BSD License, for those who don't know, allows one to do whatever one wishes with the code, including relicensing it IIRC. Frequently, a GPL coder will take BSD licensed code, add a modification or two and release the whole thing as GPL. This new creation will be unavailable to the BSD user to modify as they see fit under a BSD license. Part 1. SOFTWARE STANDARDS Code quality terms, the BSD licensed software is often of a superior quality compared to its GPL counterpart. Often, the GPL counterpart will break standards and include supposedly "enhanced" functionality which is what Microsoft does too! And when they do this they claim it is better! We can see this effect in the user space tools and shells. For example, on a Linux system, many of the tools do NOT function as they were intended, but are actually hacks and extensions. Imagine logging into a GNU/Linux system and getting the "sh" shell. If you were a true blue UNIX or BSD user you may not suspect that it is not sh at all but really the GNU BASH shell!! That the purposly hid this is scary. Many commands lie and don't tell you that they are really gnu extentioned. On a linux system, "make" is not really make but just a renamed "gmake". Sneaky stuff with a lot of extensions built in, making the casual user believe those are all part of the REAL tool. This tactic is evident throught the GPL toolset and libraries. They embrace, extend and frequently extinguish UNIX standards. This leaves newbies unwittingly learning on a GNU system getting confused when they finally go to a real UNIX system and then think Unix tools don't operate correctly! When in fact it was the GNU tools that were the problem and not operating to standards! You often see a newbie trying out FreeBSD for the first time not being able to get something to work because they don't realize that the true command doesn't support the extension that they had previously used in the Fake GPL command on their Linux box. This hurts the other UNIX communities. They must now either rewrite their whole toolset to include those new unstandard but poplular tools or be neglected by the large userbase that the FSF has tricked into using GNU software. It is even more hurtful when those tools that were extended were taken from the BSDs and embraced, extended and released as GPL. Which means the BSDs cannot use them at all. PART 2. SOFTWARE QUALITY The BSD licensed software are known for high quality (not withstanding the FreeBSD 5.x series fiasco). On a typical linux machine, many of the "free" software that one uses and depends of is not GPL licensed at all. This is because the quality and workmanship is so high, and the software so important that the GPL developers have yet to embrace and extend it in the manner discussed in Part 1 of this license. Take for example Apache. It is not GPL. Nor is PostgreSQL GPL, and it beats GPL'd mySQL's feature and reliablity. OpenBSD is extremely secure and bug free. Theo Raadt even said that the GNU/Linux kernel was a security nightmare and that they should fix it. PART 3. SOFTWARE FORKS AND COMMERCIALIZATION Often the FSF and GNU people will say that the GPL prevents a company from taking the source of a BSD licensed project and forking it into a closed source version. This line of reasoning has been the major influence in convincing people to go with GPL software. It is a seductive form of reasoning but entirely wrong. Commercial closed source software forking is of GREAT value to the project, and shut of the spigot closed source forking doesn't get the company very far! Look at X.org and XFree86. XFree86 went too far in their restrictions and were made irrelevant! Why is that? Because, most companies cannot fork away and get very far! They need to stay close to the open code base, and usually close off only the business logic functions that enable them to survive financially. And when they do survive financially, they tend to contribute to the general development making the project stronger. A great example of this is PostgreSQL. EnterpriseDB provides Oracle compatiblity in their closed source version of PostgreSQL. Yet, they are very active in developing PostgreSQL! Needless to say, they make money in their business logic niche (oracle compatiblity), yet continue to make PostgreSQL better because they get the full resources of the community when they do! Fujitsu made significant contributions to PostgreSQL making the 8.x branch possible. There was no GPL compelling them to do this. They provided native Windows support among other features. PART 4. THE SOLUTION. The Freedom License is the BSD License with 3 additional Clauses. Clause Number One: When software licensed under the Freedom License is modified and then relicensed under the GPL, that new derived software will be dual licensed with the Freedom License being the second license in addition to the GPL. This preserves the Freedom to do whatever one wants with the software as envisioned by the BSD license. Clause Number Two. If you link you GPL software to a Freedom Licensed software and you own the copyright to the GPL software, the linked result will also be dual licensed in both the GPL and the Freedom License. Clause Number Three If you create derived work from the Freedom License and license it under the GPL, it will also be licensed dually to use both the GPL and Freedom License. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
