Picking a license

[Patrick Maupin]

On May 9, 6:39 pm, Paul Boddie <p... at boddie.org.uk> wrote:

> On 10 Mai, 00:02, Patrick Maupin <pmau... at gmail.com> wrote:
> If this is code that you would consider using in an existing project,

Well, in a few cases I'm talking about, I wouldn't consider using the
code -- I just stumbled across it when researching some terms, and
discounted it immediately.  Honestly, I'm talking about code that is
so small and generic that it doesn't deserve any copyright protection
(and wouldn't get any if it came to that in court).

> but if they aren't pitching it directly at you, why would you believe
> that they are trying to change your behaviour?

Because I've seen people specifically state that their purpose in
GPLing small libraries is to encourage other people to change their
behavior.  I take those statements at face value.  Certainly RMS
carefully lays out that the LGPL should be used sparingly in his "Why
you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" post.  (Hint:
he's not suggesting a permissive license instead.)

> It is you who gets to
> decide whether you use the code or not. If the licence isn't
> acceptable to you, what prevents you from asking for a special
> licence, especially if you are going to incorporate the code in a
> product which is sold?

Well, the only time I can remember even hinting around for any kind of
different license was when I was found an svglib bug for use with
rst2pdf.  svglib is a "real" library (unlike the code snippets I was
discussing) licensed under the GPL.   I would be quite happy to
consider learning it and contributing patches to it, but I didn't want
to maintain a fork myself, and the maintainer doesn't have a public
repository and was quite busy with other stuff, and when I asked him
if he would accept patches, it was ten days before he got back to me.
rst2pdf was licensed under the MIT license before I started
contributing to it, and there is no way I was going to even consider
adding patches for a GPLed package (which would certainly have to be
GPLed) into the rst2pdf repository.  (Say what you will about how
sometimes differently licensed code can be combined, but RMS has to
share quite a bit of the blame/credit for the whole combining licenses
FUD.)  So I took a completely different path and right now the best
way to use .svg files with rst2pdf is to use inkscape to convert them
to PDFs, and use some code I wrote that allows you to use preexisting
PDFs as images.

Despite being a real library, svglib is quite small at ca. 1200 lines,
and if the license were compatible with the rst2pdf codebase license
(e.g. even if it were LGPL), I would have just stuffed the file into
the rst2pdf codebase and started hacking on it.  So there's a nice
little piece of GPLed code that isn't getting as much attention as it
would have if it were LGPLed or licensed permissively, or even if the
author had just dumped it onto sourceforge or googlecode under the GPL
but given me commit rights.  As it is, I don't think it's been
maintained in 8 years.

This is exactly the same situation that Carl was describing, only with
two different open source packages rather than with a proprietary
package and a GPL package.  The whole reason people use words like
"force" and "viral" with the GPL is that this issue would not have
come up if svglib were MIT and rst2pdf were GPL.  (Note that the LGPL
forces you to give back changes, but not in a way that makes it
incompatible with software under other licenses.  That's why you see
very few complaints about the LGPL.)

> In the more general case of people just releasing small programs and
> libraries, all such people are doing is saying, "Here is something I
> have done, and here are the terms through which this is shared."

Sure, and all I'm explaining is why I reject the terms in some cases.
I particularly reject the terms when a license that was originally
designed for a whole program is used for a small library, with the
express intent of getting more people to use said license.

> If anything, they are reaching out to see if anyone will work together
> with them on making something better, where everyone agrees to a
> common framework upon which that work will be done.

That's absolutely not always the case.  Often, it's more "here's
something I've done; take it or leave it but if you take it, it's on
these terms."

> I'm sure people
> didn't think much of Linus Torvalds' work in the beginning, either.

I think the GPL was a great license for the development model for
Linux.  I have no issues with how that worked.  Part of that is that
Linus was always active in the development.  I think that,
particularly when the concept of free software was relatively new, the
license might have been an effective focal point for rallying
contributions.

But I have definitely seen cases where people are offering something
that is not of nearly as much value as they seem to think it is, where
one of the goals is obviously to try to spread the GPL.

Regards,
Pat