[erlang-questions] [OT] Re: GPL vs. whatever [was: Erlang UUID]

[Miles Fidelman]

Just to throw in a different aspect of the GPL vs. BSD discussion:

IMHO, GPL is a far better license than BSD for a developer that intends 
to commercialize a product.

The initial developer (copyright holder) always has the option to 
release code under a dual license - GPL, BSD, or whatever for an open 
source release, something more restrictive for the commercial product 
(potentially with proprietary extensions).

With GPL, you pretty much eliminate any competition - anybody else who 
extends the code is faced with copyleft considerations, they CAN'T take 
your code, combine it with their own code, and slap a proprietary 
license around the assemblage.  With BSD, or Apache, (or LGPL for that 
matter), they can.

Of course, if you dual-license your code under GPL and a proprietary 
license, things can come back to haunt you if you want to incorporate 
community-generated extensions into your upstream code base.  In that 
case the GPL and copyleft apply to you.

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra