Re: Licensing

Mitch Pirtle wrote:

>On 17 Mar 2005 05:22:44 GMT, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> wrote:
>
>
>>The "GPL + Traditional License" approach that MySQL AB is encouraging
>>is compatible with the notion that the "market" will consist of a
>>single software producer with exclusive ownership of the code base who
>>then sell it into a traditional style "proprietary" community of
>>customers/consumers.
>>
>>
>
>I think this is a distinct problem with the GPL. I'm being told that
>it is not clear in the GPL just what exactly a 'derivitive work' is,
>so a company that takes something released under the GPL, and adds
>something proprietary to it (like making something specific for
>vacation resorts or whatever) would then be required to be released
>under the GPL.
>
>
>
I think it is actually worse than that.  Keep in mind that my business
uses the GPL extensively.

IANAL, of course....

The definition of derivative works varies from juristiction to
juristiction.  So you have a fairly nebulous term-- even whre eit may be
comparitively well defined, you have the issue that a copyright holder
in another juristiction might be able to force a different interpretation.

Secondly, if two commercial companies had a dispute and both had a
strong economic interest in clearing something up, then we might see
some real clarity at least in some juristictions, but this is not the
case.  If my business was asked by the FSF to reform our business
practices because they had a half-way plausible interpretation of what I
was not allowed to do, then I would have no choice other than to go
along.  The FSF risks *very little* to go to court.  After all, under a
*worst case scenario* the GPL becomes basically like the LGPL, and they
pay their court costs.  For the potentially infringing, however, the
risks are a lot higher.

So the GPL enforces a huge no-mans-land which exists between likely
legal interpretations and actual implimentations, simply because nobody
in their right mind would want to fight over it.

>Take Zend, for example. I'm told that they had to re-license PHP in
>order for them to keep the Zend Engine proprietary, otherwise it would
>be seen as a derivitive work. The GPL made it impossible for them to
>sell commercial products under a proprietary license as add-ons to a
>GPL codebase.
>
>
The classic example were the Obj-C libs that Apple released under a
proprietary license and provided instructions for linking with the GCC.
The FSF convinced Apple to release the code under the GPL arguing that
it was a derivative work.  Personally I am not sure that linking is
sufficient, and clearly, it should be possible to write wrapper
libraries under the LGPL and use proprietary code written against those.

For example, nobody argues that NDIS-wrapper violates the GPL even
though it essentially allows proprietary network drivers to link with a
GPL'd kernel.

>I'm now looking around at all of the largest FOSS projects out there,
>and almost none of them are under the GPL. I wonder if that is because
>the GPL is anti-business (perhaps even unintentional due to the viral
>nature of the GPL itself)?
>
>
>
My business uses the GPL extensively because we don't want to be
subsidizing our competition without reciprocation.  Simple as that.

The license is not pro or anti-business.  It is the implimentation.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers