But one of the basic principle of the freedom philosophy is that the ends do NOT justify the means. When you are following the moral high road, you do not go out of your way to take the occasional short cuts. The goal of the GPL should be to protect the work of the "self-less" developers and not to prevent the "heretic" developers from making money. There is no harm in
That is the goal of the BSD licence. So you should settle for what is available under BSD. It is the choice of the people who create the software in the first place, to choose a licence which reflects their desired usage of the software. Just as you would be having your own licence governing your own software. Just as you would not like others to dictate the licence you choose for your own software, I hope you understand it is their prerogative about whether they choose GPL or BSD. If they choose GPL, too bad. You cant demand that they choose a different licence, can you?
Lets get something very clear, your problem is *not* the licence but the people who chose this licence. If you modified GPL to allow closed source programs to use Free software, these very people will create a version of the same licence which doesnt allow the same, and you are back at square one.
GPL is just a licence - nobody is forcing this licence on anybody. The software creators always have a choice of using one of the umpteen number of Open Source software licences or one tailor made for their own use.
having such a goal on a personal level (it's every individuals personal freedom to have his own philosophy) but it should not be a part of a public reference (which the GPL virtually is for Free licenses).
Again, get your ideas clear - GPL is not a government enforced law. It is a choice of the software developers. If your philosophy and that of the the software creator whose work you want to use dont match, too bad! You cant demand that you have access to every software that you want!
set of rules that completely protect freedom. The not allowing other people to distribute *independent* software (software that can theoretically be developed without ever having touched even a single line of the "free" code) rule does not protect our freedom as a free software developer but is there
GPL is not just about protecting source code. The library is used to provide a benefit. The licence merely says that any kind of benefit (via source code or via linking) under a different licence is prohibited. It does make sense. The software creators dont want you to derive *any* benefit. It is their choice. Dont blame the licence.
I might not have made much sense above in running text so I need to re-organise my thoughts but a lot of people use the GPL without understanding all the implications (including me). And since the viral clause makes it very hard to correct mistakes, it is vital that we get it right the first time. Thus some research and heated discussions are necessary ;-)
Try creating some Free software or contributing to it yourself spending hundreds of your precious spare time on it. Then imagine somebody using this code and making money for himself without giving you the least bit of acknowledgement or appreciation. And then imagine him making sure that even you dont find out how he added features to it that you would like in yours. If you are ok with it, release your software under BSD. If you demand that you and everybody should have access to the guys additions/changes, release it under GPL.
- Sandip
-- Sandip Bhattacharya sandip (at) puroga.com Puroga Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Work: http://www.puroga.com Home: http://www.sandipb.net
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