Picking a license

[Paul Boddie]

On 15 Mai, 04:20, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l... at geek-
central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
> In message <a26e8cac-6561-40f6-ae3f-cfe176ecb... at l31g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, Paul Boddie wrote:
> > Although people can argue that usage of the GPL prevents people from
> > potentially contributing because they would not be able to sell
> > proprietary versions of the software ...
>
> It doesn’t prevent them from selling proprietary versions of their own
> contributions, any more than any other licence does.

I already mentioned this several days ago, upon which it was regarded
as not addressing some complaint or other. You own your own work, but
if you release that work to someone and it makes use of a GPL-licensed
work, then the user must be able to deal with the work according to
the terms of the GPL.

> The fact that their contribution may not be much use without the rest of
> that GPL’d code is entirely another matter. It was their choice to build on
> the work of others; they could have reinvented it from scratch themselves.

Yes. I mentioned this before: WebKit (or probably more specifically
WebCore) is an example of both originally building on GPL-licensed
code, and also building on permissively licensed code. The code
specifically belonging to WebKit and its predecessor was never GPL-
licensed itself.

My point about a platform vendor choosing to undertake the multiple
man-year task of rewriting an existing, mature GPL-licensed library
purely so that people are then able to sell proprietary software is
grounded in the observation that if people were content to make their
source code available for their products on such a platform, the GPL
would be a satisfactory basis for such activities: they own their own
code, can license it permissively (but compatibly with the GPL), and
the sources remain available; they don't need a "weaker" copyleft
licence or a permissive licence to do any of this.

Now, since it is unlikely that a business is going to spend money on a
project that doesn't change the situation in any practical sense -
that people are content with having their source code available to
their users, but now (after several man-years of effort) can link to a
permissively licensed (or weak-copyleft licensed) library - the actual
motivation emerges for choosing the LGPL or a permissive licence as
the basis for the platform's licensing: to permit the only thing that
the GPL does not, which is to let people release their software and
not commit to offering the source code; to permit, in effect, the
delivery of proprietary software.

Any claim that a licensing change is needed merely to let people
develop open source applications on the platform is dishonest,
especially as the "about" page for PySide spells out the licensing
objective. Take away the proprietary software requirement and you
might as well use the GPL.

Paul