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

[Jon Watte]

The problem with GPL, even for a business that releases the source, is that
it becomes a lot harder to accept contributions from the rest of the world.
With GPL 3, the IP provisions make that pretty much a non-starter for a
business operating in the US business climate. Thus, a GPL release (or AGPL
release) from a commercial entity into the world pretty much guarantees
that it will be a one-way street, where fixes won't work their way back
up-stream.

I think the restrictions the GPL puts on use and management of a source
base make it significantly less free than BSD/MIT, or (my favorite) public
domain.



Sincerely,

Jon Watte


--
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to
the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all."
~ Adopted by U.S. Congress, June 22, 1942



On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 8:54 PM, Miles Fidelman
<mfidelman@REDACTED>wrote:

> 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
>
>
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