On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 3:53 AM, Joerg Schilling
<Joerg.Schilling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> Umm, have they dropped perl?
>
> It seems that Larry was in a different position.
Same problem, just starting from the other side of the picture.
> If you carefully read the Artistic License, you will notice that Larry seems to
> have been under similar challenges as I have been while trying to ensure that
> this basic software is freely and in a recent bug free version available to
> everyone who needs it.
The existence of GPL and non-GPL components presents a problem for
anyone who wants combine the best components and give away their work.
Larry is a bright guy. He solved that problem - and made his
software usable in many situations where it might not have been
otherwise.
>> I'm not a fan of the GPL because of its viral and divisive nature,
>> especially for anything that could be considered library code, and
>> because it prevents the distribution of any number of potentially
>> useful combinations of components (the current poster child being zfs
>> on linux, but the issue has always been obvious). But,
>> GPL-encoumbered code is not going away, nor are the companies that use
>> it specifically because they don't want better versions than what they
>> ship to be allowed to exist.
>
> I have been a promoter of the GPL as long as it was a good choice, but this was
> around 1990 when I made my decision. I even made a proposal on how to modify
> the GPLv0 (the one, GCC was using in 1986) could be modified in order to turn
> the GPL from something that cannot be used as it would enforce you to break
> other license agreements into something that has become usable. For this
> reason, I of course know how the often missinterpreted parts of the GPL have
> been created and what their real purpose is.
The purpose has always clearly been to restrict the combination of
components that can be distributed as a 'work'. If you are old enough
you'll probably remember one of the early invocations was to block
distribution of the GPL'd gpm library in something that used RSA
encryption code even though the components were all available in
source. Except for the case of someone selling software and not
wanting better versions to compete, it seems very unattractive.
Certainly from a user's perspective, allowing all possible
combinations of well-tested, reliable components to be combined sounds
better. Imagine if the reference code for TCP/IP had not been
available for all types of use - we'd probably all still be struggling
to get things to interoperate,
> Now the GPL has become a big problem for the OSS people as it prevents
> collaboration with other OSS projects in a way that projects using different
But, as others have pointed out, the problematic part wasn't so much
the GPL in this case as the mix of GPL/non-GPL in the required build
tools, so it seems wrong to misrepresent the issue as just 'GPL' when
that was all under your control. But it does point out the divisive
and viral nature of the GPL when used out of the context of a dual
license.
> but Opensouce.org approved licenses could crosswise exchange code parts.
> For this reason, I now promote licenses that allow soch code exchange.
> I selected the CDDL as the best copyleft license in this area and the Apache
> 2.0 license as the best academic license and I did select these licenses before
> opensource.org made similar publications.
>
>> I'm just thankful that Larry Wall and others have realized that the
>> way to side-step the problem is to dual-license so that the code can
>> be distributed as GPL or a less restrictive license as the
>> circumstances require without getting involved in someone else's
>> religious or political wars.
>
> Dual licensing is always more a problem than a solution. Uncooperative entities
> will distribute enhancements (you like to be interested as author) with only
> one of the licenses, making it impossible for the original author to use it.
First, I don't see how _additional_ uses of a software component are a
problem to anyone, but even if that somehow bothers you, a dual
license of GPL or CDDL should work while still requiring the source of
changes to be available to the author.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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