3 ms·

> GPL or LGPL otherwise (v3+ preferred). I'm confused about your concern then if v3+ is preferred. Apache 2 is compatible with the GPL 3 family of licenses, it

> GPL or LGPL otherwise (v3+ preferred). I'm confused about your concern then if v3+ is preferred. Apache 2 is compatible with the GPL 3 family of licenses, it's just not compatible with the GPL 2 family of licenses. The only incompatibility of Apache 2 are GPLv2 licenses, but so is GPL 3. Apache 2 has some benefits to the user over MIT, but the GPL incompatibility is why there are two flavors of FSL.

phkahler 3y ago
>> Apache 2 is compatible with the GPL 3 family of licenses, it's just not compatible with the GPL 2 family of licenses. I doubt that. I'm not even sure the MIT license is compatible with GPL because it requires the notice be kept intact, which might be considered an additional condition if the code is merged with GPL licensed code. Apache 2 and GPL 3 might be compatible in spirit, but I doubt they are compatible to the point you can pull some Apache code into a GPL3 project and drop the text of the Apache license. Also, if it is essentially the same terms then there is NO reason to actually have a different license and it just confuses things. IMHO we actually need a new "do whatever you want" license besides MIT and BSD that make zero conditions on derived works or their inclusion of any particular license text. OTOH that would seem to imply you could claim the code as your own in the derived work (and then try to sue people using other legit forks for example).
mst 3y ago
This sort of discussion is what leads me to be fond of license disjunctions - perl's use of Artistic|GPL being the one I'm most familiar with. The idea being that "you may use this software under the terms of ${license} or under the terms of the GPL" means there's absolutely no question as to GPL compatibility for the people who value that, and you can pick the value of $license to taste (I use the same license as perl for CPAN releases, but for other languages using whichever is the most popular permissive license you like in that ecosystem is likely a good answer). I note downthread you have reasons why you can't do that with the GPL, and it might be worth having an explanation of that written up somewhere findable given that honestly hadn't occurred to me so I may not be the only one, but I figure disjunctions are still worth mentioning as a general tool even if not applicable in your case.

phkahler 3y ago

>> Apache 2 is compatible with the GPL 3 family of licenses, it's just not compatible with the GPL 2 family of licenses. I doubt that. I'm not even sure the MIT license is compatible with GPL because it requires the notice be kept intact, which might be considered an additional condition if the code is merged with GPL licensed code. Apache 2 and GPL 3 might be compatible in spirit, but I doubt they are compatible to the point you can pull some Apache code into a GPL3 project and drop the text of the Apache license. Also, if it is essentially the same terms then there is NO reason to actually have a different license and it just confuses things. IMHO we actually need a new "do whatever you want" license besides MIT and BSD that make zero conditions on derived works or their inclusion of any particular license text. OTOH that would seem to imply you could claim the code as your own in the derived work (and then try to sue people using other legit forks for example).

mst 3y ago

This sort of discussion is what leads me to be fond of license disjunctions - perl's use of Artistic|GPL being the one I'm most familiar with. The idea being that "you may use this software under the terms of ${license} or under the terms of the GPL" means there's absolutely no question as to GPL compatibility for the people who value that, and you can pick the value of $license to taste (I use the same license as perl for CPAN releases, but for other languages using whichever is the most popular permissive license you like in that ecosystem is likely a good answer). I note downthread you have reasons why you can't do that with the GPL, and it might be worth having an explanation of that written up somewhere findable given that honestly hadn't occurred to me so I may not be the only one, but I figure disjunctions are still worth mentioning as a general tool even if not applicable in your case.