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For each of these projects that herald the BSD license as a feature, I ask myself - what's wrong with GPL? In fact, if it wasn't for GNU and GPL, the world woul

For each of these projects that herald the BSD license as a feature, I ask myself - what's wrong with GPL? In fact, if it wasn't for GNU and GPL, the world would be a very different place than it is now. I would claim that there would be no such abundance of free software that we find today. So why do some people route around GPL?

wbhart 13y ago
I develop GPL software too. Quite a lot of it, actually. I'm not sure what you mean by "route around GPL". I chose BSD because it will maximise usability in certain BSD licensed programming languages. You can always fork the code, put the GPL on it and distribute it under those terms if you want.
- protomyth 13y ago
  > You can always fork the code, put the GPL on it and distribute it under those terms if you want. They can GPL their changes, but your original copyright and license stands[1]. If it was any other way, the GPL would be no protection. 1) unless you go public domain or grant the ability to change the license which the BSD does not.
  - wbhart 13y ago
    There is a difference between the license under which a project is distributed and the license of individual contributions. Any GPL project can use BSD contributions. The overall license of the project remains GPL. The opposite is not true. A BSD licensed project cannot incorporate GPL code, otherwise the project becomes a GPL project, not a BSD one.
    - protomyth 13y ago
      A mixed project's source files are BSD & GPL, it has to obey both. The BSD requirements[1] have to be honored as well as the GPL and any other licensed used. 1) such as "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."
    - belorn 13y ago
      By defining it as BSD project or and GPL project, one basically make two stand points. 1: The license choice is a political one. Picking the BSD license (or GPL) is equal to doing a political message. 2: The key feature of the project is defined by the circumstances that permission is granted to use, copy, and distribute.
- crististm 13y ago
  You can't fork a BSD project and relicense it as GPL unless you are the copyright owner. "Route around GPL" is the tendency to avoid GPL license on new projects (or to change the license on existing projects - see VLC and jquery). Since project owners are free to do that anyway, the question is why is the BSD license trumpeted as a feature of the product? Let's take the example of LLVM: there is no problem using GCC on MACs since GCC itself can be used to build proprietary systems. However, LLVM is promoted as "this is your dream compiler - fast, feature full and free from GPL restrictions".
  - wbhart 13y ago
    I don't understand the comment about forking. Sure, you can't take my files and change the license on them. But you can take any and all of my files as is, incorporate them into your own GPL project. That's effective the same thing as now the project itself must be distributed under the terms of the GPL. So long as you don't violate the terms of the BSD license, you are free to do what you want. Going the other way is not possible. (Of course when I say BSD license I mean modified-BSD, not the original 4-term license. We don't use that of course.)
justin66 13y ago
> So why do some people route around GPL? Because they can't use it in their commercially or BSD/MIT/Apache licensed code. It's not a mystery, it's the GPL doing what it was intended to do.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> For each of these projects that herald the BSD license as a feature, I ask myself - what's wrong with GPL? Using the GPL restricts licensees more in the ideological interest of the licensor. If, as a licensor, I'm not interested in restricting licensees to serve my ideological interests (or if my ideological interests don't align with those in the GPL), why would I use it? > In fact, if it wasn't for GNU and GPL, the world would be a very different place than it is now. I would claim that there would be no such abundance of free software that we find today. So? That GNU and the GPL were influential in spreading the idea of FOSS, and even that there might have been a time when the GPLs restrictions were necessary to establish critical mindshare for FOSS, does not mean that the GPL -- whether the same version that existed then or the current version, or anything in between -- is the right license for any particular project now. > So why do some people route around GPL? Because it doesn't do what those people want.
- crististm 13y ago
  This confirms my suspicion that GPL does not cater to proprietary products and that the root issue comes from ideology. Is it possible that GNU ideology was necessary just for booting? Can we bootstrap from GPL into something that does not care as much about the user's freedoms?
  - belorn 13y ago
    GPL was designed to create a legal protection against people who want to take software offered for free and then go and sue their users if the user dare to modify or share the newer version of the program. There is little chance that GPL can be made into anything that would allow such behavior. I for once would ask what the point would be. If you do not want that legal protection, then you don't have to. There is no helmet law for software developers.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Can we bootstrap from GPL into something that does not care as much about the user's freedoms? IF by "does not care as much about the user's freedoms" you mean "imposes fewer ideologically-based requirements on those using licensed software", then we already largely have -- while the GPL and its relatives (LGPL, AGPL, etc.) are still around -- there are lots of major FOSS projects with active communities around non-GPL, more permissively-licensed software. (And even many projects that use the GPL -- such as Perl and Linux -- advertise a less-restrictive interpretation of its terms than the FSF states.) I think the trend in the FOSS community in general is to prefer to less restrictive terms, which is exactly the opposite of the FSF's direction.
Sanddancer 13y ago
Because the GPL has a set of restrictions and political baggage that can act as a hindrance to a lot of applications. GPL-encumbered software, for example, cannot be linked to software written under the Eclipse license, so creating a static analysis plugin that links to GCC is not possible. A more open license allows much greater freedom to use a work in the greater Free software community.
- belorn 13y ago
  A quite irrelevant statement. If you pick BSD, you get its set of restrictions and political baggage. However, you are quite wrong about Eclipse plug-ins, and I suggest that one reads the eclipse legal FAQ before going at the license flame war. For clarity, merely interfacing or interoperating with Eclipse plug-in APIs (without modification) does not make an Eclipse plug-in a derivative work. - http://www.eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php http://www.eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php Making a Eclipse plug-ins does not make it a derivative of Eclipse. As such, you can have any license on the plug-in. Any. Only derivative works of eclipse will have to be under the Eclipse license, and only in those cases will the work license be incompatible with GPL (since both licenses has their unique requirements). A less protective license such as BSD might allow for different use cases than GPL, but some users of that BSD work will be faced with the fact that they are going to get sued if they try to modify or share the program. Be that because of the person who happened to distribute it, or patents, or DRM. The greater freedom you are talking about is then the "freedom" to get sued for doing hacker-worthy programming.
  - Sanddancer 13y ago
    My mistake regarding the Eclipse License, and I stand corrected. However, I stand behind my statement regarding BSD. Because of the restrictive nature of the GPL, one cannot take open code with it, and combine it with code written under other Free licenses, such as the CDDL. One risks being sued, etc, for that. Look at the problems that arose over cdrtools, for example. There are much less restrictive ways to solve what the GPL purports to fix, such as the Apache license.
    - 13y ago

wbhart 13y ago

I develop GPL software too. Quite a lot of it, actually. I'm not sure what you mean by "route around GPL". I chose BSD because it will maximise usability in certain BSD licensed programming languages. You can always fork the code, put the GPL on it and distribute it under those terms if you want.

protomyth 13y ago
> You can always fork the code, put the GPL on it and distribute it under those terms if you want. They can GPL their changes, but your original copyright and license stands[1]. If it was any other way, the GPL would be no protection. 1) unless you go public domain or grant the ability to change the license which the BSD does not.
- wbhart 13y ago
  There is a difference between the license under which a project is distributed and the license of individual contributions. Any GPL project can use BSD contributions. The overall license of the project remains GPL. The opposite is not true. A BSD licensed project cannot incorporate GPL code, otherwise the project becomes a GPL project, not a BSD one.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    A mixed project's source files are BSD & GPL, it has to obey both. The BSD requirements[1] have to be honored as well as the GPL and any other licensed used. 1) such as "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."
  - belorn 13y ago
    By defining it as BSD project or and GPL project, one basically make two stand points. 1: The license choice is a political one. Picking the BSD license (or GPL) is equal to doing a political message. 2: The key feature of the project is defined by the circumstances that permission is granted to use, copy, and distribute.
crististm 13y ago
You can't fork a BSD project and relicense it as GPL unless you are the copyright owner. "Route around GPL" is the tendency to avoid GPL license on new projects (or to change the license on existing projects - see VLC and jquery). Since project owners are free to do that anyway, the question is why is the BSD license trumpeted as a feature of the product? Let's take the example of LLVM: there is no problem using GCC on MACs since GCC itself can be used to build proprietary systems. However, LLVM is promoted as "this is your dream compiler - fast, feature full and free from GPL restrictions".
- wbhart 13y ago
  I don't understand the comment about forking. Sure, you can't take my files and change the license on them. But you can take any and all of my files as is, incorporate them into your own GPL project. That's effective the same thing as now the project itself must be distributed under the terms of the GPL. So long as you don't violate the terms of the BSD license, you are free to do what you want. Going the other way is not possible. (Of course when I say BSD license I mean modified-BSD, not the original 4-term license. We don't use that of course.)

justin66 13y ago

> So why do some people route around GPL? Because they can't use it in their commercially or BSD/MIT/Apache licensed code. It's not a mystery, it's the GPL doing what it was intended to do.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> For each of these projects that herald the BSD license as a feature, I ask myself - what's wrong with GPL? Using the GPL restricts licensees more in the ideological interest of the licensor. If, as a licensor, I'm not interested in restricting licensees to serve my ideological interests (or if my ideological interests don't align with those in the GPL), why would I use it? > In fact, if it wasn't for GNU and GPL, the world would be a very different place than it is now. I would claim that there would be no such abundance of free software that we find today. So? That GNU and the GPL were influential in spreading the idea of FOSS, and even that there might have been a time when the GPLs restrictions were necessary to establish critical mindshare for FOSS, does not mean that the GPL -- whether the same version that existed then or the current version, or anything in between -- is the right license for any particular project now. > So why do some people route around GPL? Because it doesn't do what those people want.

crististm 13y ago
This confirms my suspicion that GPL does not cater to proprietary products and that the root issue comes from ideology. Is it possible that GNU ideology was necessary just for booting? Can we bootstrap from GPL into something that does not care as much about the user's freedoms?
- belorn 13y ago
  GPL was designed to create a legal protection against people who want to take software offered for free and then go and sue their users if the user dare to modify or share the newer version of the program. There is little chance that GPL can be made into anything that would allow such behavior. I for once would ask what the point would be. If you do not want that legal protection, then you don't have to. There is no helmet law for software developers.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Can we bootstrap from GPL into something that does not care as much about the user's freedoms? IF by "does not care as much about the user's freedoms" you mean "imposes fewer ideologically-based requirements on those using licensed software", then we already largely have -- while the GPL and its relatives (LGPL, AGPL, etc.) are still around -- there are lots of major FOSS projects with active communities around non-GPL, more permissively-licensed software. (And even many projects that use the GPL -- such as Perl and Linux -- advertise a less-restrictive interpretation of its terms than the FSF states.) I think the trend in the FOSS community in general is to prefer to less restrictive terms, which is exactly the opposite of the FSF's direction.

Sanddancer 13y ago

Because the GPL has a set of restrictions and political baggage that can act as a hindrance to a lot of applications. GPL-encumbered software, for example, cannot be linked to software written under the Eclipse license, so creating a static analysis plugin that links to GCC is not possible. A more open license allows much greater freedom to use a work in the greater Free software community.

belorn 13y ago
A quite irrelevant statement. If you pick BSD, you get its set of restrictions and political baggage. However, you are quite wrong about Eclipse plug-ins, and I suggest that one reads the eclipse legal FAQ before going at the license flame war. For clarity, merely interfacing or interoperating with Eclipse plug-in APIs (without modification) does not make an Eclipse plug-in a derivative work. - http://www.eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php http://www.eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php Making a Eclipse plug-ins does not make it a derivative of Eclipse. As such, you can have any license on the plug-in. Any. Only derivative works of eclipse will have to be under the Eclipse license, and only in those cases will the work license be incompatible with GPL (since both licenses has their unique requirements). A less protective license such as BSD might allow for different use cases than GPL, but some users of that BSD work will be faced with the fact that they are going to get sued if they try to modify or share the program. Be that because of the person who happened to distribute it, or patents, or DRM. The greater freedom you are talking about is then the "freedom" to get sued for doing hacker-worthy programming.
- Sanddancer 13y ago
  My mistake regarding the Eclipse License, and I stand corrected. However, I stand behind my statement regarding BSD. Because of the restrictive nature of the GPL, one cannot take open code with it, and combine it with code written under other Free licenses, such as the CDDL. One risks being sued, etc, for that. Look at the problems that arose over cdrtools, for example. There are much less restrictive ways to solve what the GPL purports to fix, such as the Apache license.
  - 13y ago