On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 22:55 +0530, Rony wrote: > > not necessarily - a lot of people just do not touch GPL code - they > > prefer to contribute code to projects with a more free license. > > For the sake of those who have been following this long thread and > trying to make some sense out of it, could we have an objective list > of > Licenses from all participants with their pros and cons listed. If > GPL > restricts freedom then in what way? If BSD restricts freedom then in > what way? Short and simple please.
there are 35-40 recognised open source licenses. The simplest is the BSD license. It is only 3 clauses. Basically it says: you can use modify and redistribute the software in any way you like. The only condition is that if you make it proprietary then you cannot use the original name or attribute to the original. the GPL says: you can use modify redistribute, but you cannot make it proprietary and if you distribute your modifications you *must* contribute it back All other licenses fall between these two. (except the microsoft licenses which are even weirder than the GPL) The above is an over simplification of course. > > If experts on this list cannot agree on what license is good for > software, how do we expect companies to decide on what type of > software > they will implement on their systems. the *nix view is to have many small tools - each tool does only one thing and does it well. The doze view is to have one giant tool that does everything. Each type of software is different, and a license that suits one type will not suit another - also a license that is good for one country may not be good for another. > IMHO, this world has a wide > variety of business models, software under different licenses and > everyone appears to be making a lot of money and there is nothing > that > will last forever. Changes are happening all the time and happen to > everyone. So lets give everyone the freedom to choose their favorite > license and focus on developing software that is most usefull to > everyone. right you are. I for one am not actually anti-gpl. I have many good friends who use the GPL and I respect their choice and also I feel that things like iptables and such stuff are best GPLed or put under some restrictive license. What I am opposing here is the GPLwalas who think that everything (including their pseudo open source wares) should be GPLed. That the GPL is the be all and end all of open source development. And who sneer at all other licenses and gleefully predict doom if one uses one of them. There is also a large class of people who are taken in by this propaganda and think that there is only one open source license foolishly license their software under the GPL and only realise their mistake too late. -- regards KG http://lawgon.livejournal.com Coimbatore LUG rox http://ilugcbe.techstud.org/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
