On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 03:25:46PM +0300, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: > On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Tzafrir Cohen <[email protected]>wrote: > > > > > > IMHO in most of these cases the GPL license will be a deterrence > > > from even trying the thing. > > > > But this is when the GPL is used in production. Not for evaluation. > > > > I think this last statement is wrong. On top of the "distribution" problem > IP-conscious companies also worry about "contamination". So GPL as an > evaluation license carries this additional concern. Overall, I'd say GPL has > a larger "chilling factor" than a decent (and short) proprietary license.
The GPL (even V3) is shorter than most propritary licenses I've seen. Contamination is a potential issue with any other code. Suppose you got some code from Oracle under the terms of the OLLE (Oracle License for Library Evaluation), played with it a bit, and figured it is junk you shouldn't use. You team went on to use your own code instead. A year later Oracle sues your company (over an unrelated issue). Both the Oracle lawyers and your company's lawyers look for problematic spots. So, have you been contamination with Oracle-copyrighted code? Are you licensed to use it? -- Tzafrir Cohen | [email protected] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [email protected] | | best [email protected] | | friend _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
