Re: GPL v3? Other license options?

[Christopher Murtagh <..hidden..>]

On Sunday 19 August 2007 04:48:55 Chris Travers wrote:
> On 8/18/07, Christopher Murtagh <..hidden..> wrote:
> > On Saturday 18 August 2007 13:47:32 Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > > As a core member, if it were up to me, we would ditch GPL all together.
> >
> > Fortunately IMO, we're not able to do so without a total re-write of the
> > software.
>
> On the other hand, we *could* go LGPL and make it entirely LGPL at 2.0. 
> The work as a whole would be GPL until the last GPL code would be out. 
> Since we are beginning a rewrite anyway....

 Sure, but I don't really see the much of an advantage in our case to change 
licenses (to v3 or LGPL). At the moment, I don't see the current license 
causing any problems or confusion with anyone. Changing licenses makes people 
leery though. 

> The GPL v2 license was a good license for many purposes.  The GPL v3
> undermines that pretty substantially though I would not be opposed to doing
> new code as GPL v2-only if we could be assured that dependencies wouldn't
> move on us.

 Even if we kept it 'GPL v2 or greater' what impact would it have on us? If 
someone wants to fork LSMB and create a GPL 3 project out of it, I don't see 
a problem with it. 

> > I'm a big fan of the GPL for these exact same reasons. The GPL is the
> > reason
> > why there is so much corporate support for the Linux kernel.
>
> I used to think so.  I now think it is because BSD was always pretty
> fragmented and political while Linus was very good at getting community
> involvement.

 I've been talking to some folks at these companies now, and at first their 
lawyers didn't really get the GPL at all, and in companies like IBM, the idea 
of giving away IP went against their core existence. This has changed greatly 
though, the SCO case really brought this to the lawyers attention as well as 
to the upper crust of these companies. I guess we have SCO to thank for that.

 Now, they definitely see the GPL as a way of releasing code for their core 
infrastructure that customers or OEMs can change to suit their needs, without 
it being used against them by the competition. 

> > If the kernel was using the BSD license for example, IBM, HP, SGI, etc. 
> > would all have to worry that one of their competitors would come up with 
> > the 'Next big thing' (tm) and be able to run away with the milk, the cows 
> > and the farm to boot.
>
> Funny.  Tell this to the PostgreSQL community or the Apache community.  IBM
> does contribute code back to Apache iirc.

 Yes, but IBM does not put any of its core business in either of these. The 
amount of work and effort IBM puts into Linux easily dwarfs anything it does 
in PostgresSQL and Apache combined. IBM's got DB2, and Websphere. There's no 
indication that IBM is dumping DB2 for Postgres. However, AIX is on its way 
to getting mothballed in favour of Linux and that's *big*. The difference 
between these applications and Linux is that IBM needs the drivers it writes 
for its hardware to work in competitors hardware, if the competitors change 
their hardware, they won't be able to adapt the IBM drivers without releasing 
this code. Linux is a great way to get your foot in the door and the GPL a 
great equalizer.

> Reference implementations *should* be BSD licensed. 

 I don't see why making it BSD vs GPL has any real benefit to the users, but 
that's an entirely different philosophical discussion. Here, have some of 
this fruit drink, and we'll talk... ;-)

> If we go with the GPL v3, I would like to suggest we have further
> discussions relating to what other permissions we might need to add for
> portions of the code. 

 Again, I don't see any advantage or need to move to GPL 3 at the moment. 
Sure, it makes for an interesting, if not heated discussion, but other than 
that what does it bring to us or our users? If it ain't broke...

Cheers,

Chris