4 ms·

Landley's major issue with GPL is that there isn't "a" GPL anymore. To paraphrase a talk (or multiple talks) I've seen of his: "the GPL", even up to GPLv2 was s

Landley's major issue with GPL is that there isn't "a" GPL anymore. To paraphrase a talk (or multiple talks) I've seen of his: "the GPL", even up to GPLv2 was seen as a universal receiver of source code. For the most part it didn't matter which free/open code was linked to it, GPLv2 could be compatible with it. Enter GPLv3 which wasn't even compatible with the unmodified GPLv2 and to Landley this made it no longer a universal receiver. Couple that with his disagreement over using the GPL in BusyBox to leverage source code from vendors, he created ToyBox and the 0BSD license. He sees the 0BSD license as a universal donor since GPL is no longer a universal receiver.

deleted 5y ago
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rwmj 5y ago
There are loads of BSD and MIT variants. But if this is a real objection why not settle on a specific version of the GPL, as Linux has done? List of variants of BSD: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:BSD?rd=Licensing/BSD#BSDwithAdvertising https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:BSD?rd=Licensing/BS...
- numpad0 5y ago
  Can you mix "v3 or later" code with v2 code? I think that's violation of copyright.
  - rwmj 5y ago
    Does the toybox project mix their code with GPLv3+ code? The weird argument above was that there are apparently too many variations of the GPL (even though there are many, many more BSD and MIT variants). So I said, stick to a single GPL variant. And then you ask if you can mix GPL versions together.
    - afiori 5y ago
      the argument was that there are incompatible variations of the gpl, in most cases those variations of MIT licenses can be mixed in any way
kubanczyk 5y ago
I didn't know about the receiver-vs-donor concept, but my first reaction is that the "universal receiver" seems to signal the ambition to gather all free software and make it optionally-free. I mean for now there is a fashion among contributors to keep software open-source, but they don't like it as obligation. (Where "contributors" include ICs, but are really mainly businesses these days.) And the notion of "universality" is in fact more about forsaking my right to require the software to remain free. Why would I need that again? It seems that when thinking about progress/ROI open-source turned out to work very well as a fashion, what's wrong with it being a legal obligation then?

deleted 5y ago

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rwmj 5y ago

There are loads of BSD and MIT variants. But if this is a real objection why not settle on a specific version of the GPL, as Linux has done? List of variants of BSD: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:BSD?rd=Licensing/BSD#BSDwithAdvertising https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:BSD?rd=Licensing/BS...

numpad0 5y ago
Can you mix "v3 or later" code with v2 code? I think that's violation of copyright.
- rwmj 5y ago
  Does the toybox project mix their code with GPLv3+ code? The weird argument above was that there are apparently too many variations of the GPL (even though there are many, many more BSD and MIT variants). So I said, stick to a single GPL variant. And then you ask if you can mix GPL versions together.
  - afiori 5y ago
    the argument was that there are incompatible variations of the gpl, in most cases those variations of MIT licenses can be mixed in any way

kubanczyk 5y ago

I didn't know about the receiver-vs-donor concept, but my first reaction is that the "universal receiver" seems to signal the ambition to gather all free software and make it optionally-free. I mean for now there is a fashion among contributors to keep software open-source, but they don't like it as obligation. (Where "contributors" include ICs, but are really mainly businesses these days.) And the notion of "universality" is in fact more about forsaking my right to require the software to remain free. Why would I need that again? It seems that when thinking about progress/ROI open-source turned out to work very well as a fashion, what's wrong with it being a legal obligation then?