[erlang-questions] [ANN] Erlang UUID

[Michael Truog]

On 03/11/2012 02:27 PM, james wrote:
> > There are two sides to every story.  A good link to some discussion of pro-GPL versus pro-BSD can be found here:
> >The GPL license is conducive to liberating software.
> >The BSD license is conducive to liberating people.
>
> How is this relevant?  I don't like the GPL.  So what?
>
> What you said is simply wrong.  What you said is:
>
> > This is a little misleading.  You can never sell anything that contains GPL software
>
> Whether BSD or GPL is better in some way (or even in every way) is not relevant at all to whether you have materially misrepresented what GPL requires, and is simply diversion.
>
> Which clause of the GPL justifies your statement?  They are numbered, it should be straightforward for you to identify the one you think has this effect.
>
> I think its bad to let a clearly erroneous statement go unchallenged and fester malignantly in the archives for posterity.
>
> James
>
I can understand that this subject is a tough subject to reach agreement on, due to our own viewpoints of what open source software is, free software, freedom to reuse software, etc..  So, I don't expect us to agree on the specifics.  When looking at the newest version, v3 (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), the relevant numbers are: #5 and #6.  You may notice the paragraph hiding at the bottom of the page with the first sentence that says "The GNU General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs.", which is a useful summary of the problem.  Any modifications of GPL software retains the GPL license and must be distributed with the source code.  This is good for making sure that modifications always feed back into the open source community.  However, this is bad for any proprietary changes that give a company a competitive advantage.  I don't regard my previous statements as erroneous, just simply more abstract.

- Michael