> Anand Kumria wrote:
>
> So non-GPL won't disappear. Other bigger exampels are Bind, OpenLDAP,
> OpenSSL, Apache and most MTAs (Mail Transer Agents) except Exim.
Big infrastructural projects... I decided not to mention these because I'd
imagine that the past lack of corporate acceptance of the GPL and LGPL would
have made their use prohibitive.
Thankfully, businesses are starting to wise up now, and realise that the GPL
isn't quite as bad as they thought it would be (and it sounds as though
version 3 will be even better defined).
> More concerning than GPL vs non-GPL is how is how a lot of major
> pieces of infrastructure have their own licence.
This is the catch, isn't it? I'm hardly worried by forks of software - we
all know the arguments as to why forking is frowned upon until it's
absolutely necessary - what worries me is disintegration *between* the
software.
The more incompatible licences there are - especially those typically
difficult one-time ones - the harder it is to determine whether linking
important pieces of software is allowed.
This completely blows away the network effects of Free Software, and is
probably the most dangerous form of disintegration - and it's from the
*inside*!
> This is the principle reason I've avoided PHP. With so many reasonable
> scripting languages popping up, why settle for a non-GPL one.
Obviously a good time to mention Ruby - http://www.ruby-lang.org/ - which is
GPL/Artistic, just like Perl. It's very sexy... and it's BIG IN JAPAN. ;)
> Licence issues are mostly secondary. You do get some noticible exceptions
> to this rule though (e.g. Alan Cox) whose, as I understand it, decision to
> work on the Linux kernel was principaly because it was under the GPL.
I was under the impression that Alan developed his trust and commitment to
Free Software after the event... Linux was (as it has been for many of us)
just in the right place, at the right time, on the right architecture, and
with the right attitude. :)
> I believe that in future more developers will be conscious of the licence
> software is under -- I think not GPL'ing your software will start to
> exclude you from a large talent pool (and also a good body of code) which
> will cause yor potential project to proceed less rapidly (if at all).
Hopefully the sensible moves taken by Mozilla.org and Trolltech (who I
didn't mention before - they've relicenced Qt under a QPL/GPL combo) will
influence other developers, and keep all this code in the same pool...
Devil's Advocate: Is this why people complain about the "viral" aspects of
the GPL, and are we seeing a new form of lock-in? [ My opinion is that, if
it achieves good, the "lock-in" isn't bad... But I could be brainwashed. ]
- Jeff
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