4 ms·
"How does the GPL scare customers in a way that the BSDL does not? This is a big claim to make without supporting arguments." That's easy to support. The GPL
by brl 18y ago
"How does the GPL scare customers in a way that the BSDL does not? This is a big claim to make without supporting arguments."
That's easy to support. The GPL wing of the free software movement is famous for being unreasonably prone to solving conflicts with litigation. They are also famous for going to extreme lengths to dig up evidence that somebody is committing a 'crime' against their licensing ideology.
The academic license community (BSD, MIT, etc) on the other hand rarely if ever enforce their licenses in any formal way. They especially don't end up in court over it!
- nailer 18y agoYou are provably wrong on every point you just made. 1. The GPL is not a wing of a movement. It is a license. 2. The license isn't an ideology, it's an agreement willingly entered into by people who wish to use the FSF's copywritten creations. If people don't wish to use the FSF's copywritten creations, they do not have to license the software. 3. The majority of conflicts have been resolved without litigation - in fact you'll find the FSF has only recently litigated a company for the first time ever, despite existing for a couple of decades. Even in that case (Cisco Systems), this was after years of attempting to negotiate out of court. BSD and MIT licenses have only provided a wealth of 'do what you want' source code with a license requiring little more than attribution. The major beneficiaries of BSD licenses have been Sun, Microsoft, and NetApp. If BSD licensing were a successful basis for growing software, every startup wouldn't be running on Linux, as Linux wouldn't exist. But it isn't, so they nearly always are. In short: grow up hippy, I ain't giving you source code for free.