On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 9:23 PM, denstar <[email protected]> wrote:
> It's messed up that you can take Apache 2 licensed code and pull it > under the GPL, but not the reverse -- yet both are "open". > That gets down to the philosophical question of whether or not it's more open to allow people to take and not give back, or if it's more open to have the "give back" bit be part and parcel of the license. One for the ages I suppose, and which is more or less open depends on your perspective/vantage point. The interesting thing to me about the GPL is that it's the one license that puts the users and communities around projects above all in the license. In other words, protecting the end users' rights are at the forefront of the GPL, even above the rights of the authors of the code, and that in turn drives what can and can't be done with the code. Personally I do like the fact that protecting the users and community is the standpoint from which the GPL is written. Ultimately what's better or worse for a specific project depends on what the authors are trying to accomplish both with the code itself and the project as a whole. Clearly both types of licenses are needed or both wouldn't exist. Also interesting to note that taken as a whole, GPL licenses represent 70% of free software projects (~65% if you remove the LGPL from the total), whereas for all the name recognition it has, the Apache 2 license represents only 4% of projects. Not saying one's better or worse, and not sure I even have a point with the statistics really, just interesting stuff to ponder. I wouldn't be a quarter the coder I am if it weren't for many *many* > other coders, being willing for (and encouraging) the sharing of their > code. If anything at all I come up with is useful to someone else, > verbatim or idea-wise, more power to 'em. May they make billions off > my blood, sweat, and tears! > Definitely, and this applies equally under either style of license. It's just with the GPL you can't take and not give back, which returns us to the original question. :-) -- Matthew Woodward [email protected] http://blog.mattwoodward.com identi.ca / Twitter: @mpwoodward Please do not send me proprietary file formats such as Word, PowerPoint, etc. as attachments. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html -- Open BlueDragon Public Mailing List http://www.openbluedragon.org/ http://twitter.com/OpenBlueDragon official manual: http://www.openbluedragon.org/manual/ Ready2Run CFML http://www.openbluedragon.org/openbdjam/ mailing list - http://groups.google.com/group/openbd?hl=en
