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Re: [OT] Free licenses, possibly viral?

On Wednesday, August 27, 2003, at 11:17 AM, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

At 8:29 AM -0400 8/27/03, Ruffin Bailey wrote:

nor should you have to if you prefer to be the sole seller of novel software you created *that doesn't need servicing*.

In other words, you are not willing to agree to the license terms under which they have published their library. They've offered to share their code with you and all they ask in return is the same courtesy. You aren't willing to do that. You want to share their code but horde your own. Fine, you're free to negotiate a different license with the copyright holder for a suitable sum of money that grants you different rights.

But I get really peeved when people tell me that they think *my* code should be free, but *their* code shouldn't be. The GPL is scrupulously fair and equal. if you don't want to play by the GPL rules, don't use GPL software.

You seemed to have missed the point of my post, and the original point of the thread.

To start, I do enjoy GPL software, and do use it. I'm planning on contributing significant time of my upcoming vacation to check in some printing functionality to SQuirreL SQL (http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net/), an excellent, once-GPL'd now LGPL'd Java isql client, and I've contributed code to help port Furthurnet (http://sourceforge.net/projects/furthurnet/), a legal music-swapping application, to Mac OS 9. I've certainly never broken with the license and used any of this code in my own. So let's stop misrepresenting what I am and am not willing to do!

If you'd like to use GPL, great! Do it! I'll follow it to the letter. If you'd like, as many do, to release a library that other people can freely include in their closed-source, copyrighted software and want to officially ask only that they show you the common courtesy of returning to you any possible improvements on your library or work, you should be able to do that too! And you shouldn't have to go to the BSD license and count on an honor system.

We once thought the LGPL did exactly that. I still think it does, but there are many who don't. You've pulled out the GPL with a library exception as a possible replacement, and I wasn't sure how your quoted exception helped change the issue people had with LGPL. I would like to see some sort of license fill that void. I thought that's what this thread was, give or take, about. Aside from my too loose use of the word "commercial", I believe it was.

There are many kinds of software. Some require services, like servers running Linux, Apache, and Tomcat. The GPL doesn't interfere [greatly] with a programmer earning bread with those techs. Some software doesn't require supporting services at all, like [my use of, at least] MS Word. To GPL this software makes it difficult for the original coders to earn their bread selling it. Then anyone can build, burn, and sell. Your interest in MacOS shows me you understand and have at least previously supported this concept with your dollars.

The LGPL used to allow people without the resources to contribute GPL'd projects or license their work under GPL a way to gain from and give to the FSF's movement. Now, with Java, that's not necessarily clearly the case.

For the FSF, or anyone, including yourself, to assume that everyone can, or even wants to, spend full-time hours to create works that anyone can compile and resell with a minimal investment, is to lose touch with [others'] reality. To assume these same people are therefore somehow positioned vehemently against the FSF is just as wrongheaded. I think the spirit of the LGPL allowed a great meeting point for the two camps.

Anyhow, if you'd like to get in a last word, I honestly think that'd be great. I've enjoyed your books from O'Reilly and, with them, got my start into Java. I respect your opinions and works, but do think you've misrepresented me here and have spread a little FSF propaganda onto the list. Sorry to have bugged everyone else, hope the emails were at least marginally interesting, and I'll send any further replies off list.

Thanks again for your replies,

Ruffin Bailey

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 >Re: [OT] Free licenses, possibly viral? (From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <email@hidden>)



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