Frank Hecker wrote:
> I strongly believe that it is impossible (not difficult, impossible)
> to create a non-GPL copyleft license that the FSF would endorse as GPL
> compatible, without including clauses that make the license terms
> essentially equivalent to the GPL and/or allowing the license terms to
> be converted to the GPL proper.
If you are right, then this discussion is mood. Of course, I hope, you
are wrong. I am so sick of that crap. I am using open-source
particularily *not* to have to worry about license crap.
> All the non-FSF copyleft licenses are listed as GPL-incompatible
> Coincidence? I think not.
I thought so.
> And partly this impossibility is simply because the FSF is strongly
> motivated to discourage the use of copyleft licenses that they
> themselves do not create or control, to the point of nitpicking on
> certain license provisions deemed to be "restrictions over and beyond
> the GPL", and even to the point of being sometimes vague and
> unspecific in their public statements as to why a particular non-FSF
> license is incompatible. (For example, that the MPL "has some complex
> restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL.")
You say "public statements". My hope was that you or mitchell know more
from direct conversation with the FSF. Since this causes so much
trouble, I would like to hear better reasons than the vague and broad
statements I heard so far.
So, again: Does anybody know the *concrete* MPL terms which are
considered "additional restrictions" over the GPL by the FSF? If not,
does anybody volunteer to ask the FSF?
> changing [the MPL]... to be like the LGPL in explicitly providing for
> conversion of MPL terms to GPL terms, within the license itself. And
> I'm sure anyone objecting to the tri-license scheme would object to
> this latter change, and would prefer the current MPL 1.1 or something
> close to it.
Agreed.
