On 10/1/2018 10:14 AM, Cuvtixo D wrote:
Brand new to this mailing list, but I wanted to respond to a
conversation about Open source licences, and apologies to the authors,
I lost track of who said what in the following:
>>> (Speaking personally, I'd love to see *FreeDOS* re-licensed under
>>> something other than the GPL.)
>> I don't honestly know if that's even legally possible now that Pat
>> has died. (Gotta love legalese, ugh. No, I'm not a lawyer.)
> I don't believe it is possible.
>> I also don't think GPL hinders many potential contributors (versus,
>> what, BSD two-clause??). I'll admit that GPL can cause some practical
>> problems, in rare cases, but it also avoids or solves some other
>> practical problems (again, in some rare cases).
Firstly, /GPL still presently has no American legal force behind it!/
dmccunney (I believe) mentioned Stallman's lack of touch with reality,
and, I think this is reflected most importantly in the fact that he
hasn't rallied behind any court case against any GPL violators.
American law, based on the /common law/ system, builds upon legal
court precedent. When no one sues (admittedly an expensive process,
that someone like Stallman might have to get funding for), it remains
in legal limbo. Maybe I'm just unaware, and some company like Red Hat
has already embarked on legal proceedings. But until then, violating
GPL will /only /bring anger from the "open source
That is not quite correct. The FSF (Free Software Foundation) has a
legal "arm" that has engaged in several lawsuits to enforce the GPL.
Just check https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/GPL%20Enforcement%20Cases
But it is indeed correct (IMHO) that Stallman and a lot of his fanbois
have a serious disconnect with reality. And that shows in the viral
nature of the GPL(2). Some of the issues were leveled somewhat in GPL3
but the basic damage was done. And it could blow up big time in
Stallman's (and everybody else's) face if for example people would their
boycott/revocation of license for parts of the Linux kernel really pull
through after the over-the-top code of conduct changes that some people
immediately tried to push through after Linus pulled himself out of the
day to day business for a while...
Overall, there are much better suited Open Source licenses, like MIT or
BSD, but the bonehead nature of the GPL has also resulted in far too
many licenses that it is easy to keep an overview and really see any
differences. And such nonsense like the spat that one entity has with
the OpenWatcom license, while it is perfectly fine with another.
Ralf
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