[SciPy-User] Central File Exchange for SciPy

[David Warde-Farley]

On 2010-10-30, at 6:59 PM, Jochen Schröder wrote:

> Finally the biggest problem I have is with the notion that forcing a 
> specific OSS choice onto developers is ok.

Nobody's forcing them to release their code under any particular license -- merely suggesting that if you want to make your code available *on our servers* it's got to be liberally licensed. This isn't really any different from sites like Wikipedia, where you must consent to your contributions being used under the terms GFDL. If you don't like Wikipedia's terms you are free to make your content available elsewhere on the web, and the same goes for the hypothetical code-sharing site.

> If someone chooses a licence, they have a reason to do so and it is their choice.

Actually you'd be surprised how often developers who release GPL code are unaware of the implications or license specifics, and just chose it because it's popular.

> The funny thing is  that the "free software crowd", often gets accused of this,
> however I've found that often the BSD crowd is a lot worse, and often quite
> hostile towards GPL licensing.

That shouldn't really be a surprise. As Fernando pointed out more eloquently than I can, the asymmetric nature of the two licenses means that developers and users of BSD-licensed code have nothing to gain and everything to lose in this situation. While there's no technical or legal grounds for objection, there's good reasons to be annoyed by it.

David