4 ms·

Can't speak for commenter above, but v3 has a "patent license" clause that is literally impossible for any large company to comply with. Not just difficult or

Can't speak for commenter above, but v3 has a "patent license" clause that is literally impossible for any large company to comply with. Not just difficult or undesirable, but impossible. GPLv3 requires you to offer a free license of any patent you have a license to that might apply to the GPLv3 software to anyone who might want to use that software. Almost any large company has at one time or another purchased broad patent licenses that cannot be sublicensed. So GPLv3 is an absolute non-starter for any large company. You want to doom a product, license it under GPLv3. It may not instantly kill it, but it will slowly strangle it.

LoSboccacc 11y ago
it is also more difficult to demonstrate project independence. if two bits touch, GPLv3 spreads. v2 at least is worded in a way that allows non spreading if you can demonstrate the functionality can be replaced by a third party lib without altering the software functionality also it makes unnecessarily hard to comply. in GPLv2 it was quite easy to determine who was an user and who was entitled to receive the code. GPLv3 makes this unnecessarily difficult because it overreacted at previous GPLv2 shortcoming. Think for example deploying on a kiosk.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  > Think for example deploying on a kiosk. I thought that it depended upon who owns the kiosk and if software upgrades are a normal part of its operation?
  - LoSboccacc 11y ago
    it's worded so that any end user has a license to your code (to prevent tivoization)
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Sounds absolutely within the spirit of what the GPL was intended to achieve. What would be unfair is if a user of a photo booth kiosk was allowed to flash the firmware...
      - LoSboccacc 11y ago
        Yes it works pretty well for that, I am not saying it doesn't. I'm arguing it has impractical consequences
        belorn 11y ago
        What is the impractical consequences if you sold a photo booth kiosk and had to give the recipient the source code for the internal software? I would assume that photo booth kiosks producers got their money from selling the physical kiosk and competition on the internal kiosk software is going be at best an minor advantage. Management software or similar could still be proprietary, through competitors could make management software that is compatible with those kiosks, which is a good thing in my book. Customers of the kiosks however have no such right to source code, since they don't receive any copies of the software from using it. You enter, you insert a coin/cc, and out comes a photo and maybe a code which allow you to download the image to your phone. Neither is "copies" of the kiosk internal software so the license doesn't involve them.

LoSboccacc 11y ago

it is also more difficult to demonstrate project independence. if two bits touch, GPLv3 spreads. v2 at least is worded in a way that allows non spreading if you can demonstrate the functionality can be replaced by a third party lib without altering the software functionality also it makes unnecessarily hard to comply. in GPLv2 it was quite easy to determine who was an user and who was entitled to receive the code. GPLv3 makes this unnecessarily difficult because it overreacted at previous GPLv2 shortcoming. Think for example deploying on a kiosk.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
> Think for example deploying on a kiosk. I thought that it depended upon who owns the kiosk and if software upgrades are a normal part of its operation?
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  it's worded so that any end user has a license to your code (to prevent tivoization)
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Sounds absolutely within the spirit of what the GPL was intended to achieve. What would be unfair is if a user of a photo booth kiosk was allowed to flash the firmware...
    - LoSboccacc 11y ago
      Yes it works pretty well for that, I am not saying it doesn't. I'm arguing it has impractical consequences
      - belorn 11y ago
        What is the impractical consequences if you sold a photo booth kiosk and had to give the recipient the source code for the internal software? I would assume that photo booth kiosks producers got their money from selling the physical kiosk and competition on the internal kiosk software is going be at best an minor advantage. Management software or similar could still be proprietary, through competitors could make management software that is compatible with those kiosks, which is a good thing in my book. Customers of the kiosks however have no such right to source code, since they don't receive any copies of the software from using it. You enter, you insert a coin/cc, and out comes a photo and maybe a code which allow you to download the image to your phone. Neither is "copies" of the kiosk internal software so the license doesn't involve them.