Picking a license

[Paul Boddie]

On 10 Mai, 03:09, Patrick Maupin <pmau... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 9, 6:39 pm, Paul Boddie <p... at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > 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.)

Sure, but all he's asking you to do is to make the software available
under a GPL-compatible licence.

[...]

> 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.)

I think the FSF are quite clear about combining licences - they even
go to the trouble of telling you which ones are compatible with the
GPL - so I don't see where "FUD" comes into it, apart from possible
corner cases where people are trying to circumvent the terms of a
licence and probably know themselves that what they're trying to do is
at the very least against the spirit of the licence. Even then,
warning people about their little project to make proprietary plugins,
or whatever, is not really "FUD".

As for rst2pdf, what your modifications would mean is that the
software would need to be redistributed under a GPL-compatible
licence. I'll accept that this does affect what people can then do
with the project, but once again, you've mentioned at least one LGPL-
licensed project which was previously in this very situation, and it
was never actually GPL-licensed itself. Here's the relevant FAQ entry:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL

[...]

> 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.)

Actually, the copyleft licences don't "force" anyone to "give back
changes": they oblige people to pass on changes.

[...]

> 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.

Well, even the FSF doesn't approve of trivial projects using the GPL:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatIfWorkIsShort

Paul