[Zope] OT: Re: [Zope] Zope and the GPL poison pill

Andrew Kenneth Milton akm@mail.theinternet.com.au
Thu, 14 Sep 2000 09:54:11 +1000


+-------[ Bill Anderson ]----------------------
| Andrew Kenneth Milton wrote:
| > 
| > +-------[ Dario Lopez-Kästen ]----------------------
| > |
| > | >From: "Toby Dickenson" <mbel44@dial.pipex.net>
| > | > If that is your motivation then you may find that you get *more* back
| > | > by not using the GPL. My contributions to Zope (both personal and on
| > | > company time) are fairly significant in total, and would not have
| > | > happened if Zope was under a GPL license.
| > | >
| > |
| > | but is that because you personally don't like/endorse the GPL for
| > | what-ever-reason or is it because the GPL actually prevents this? and if so,
| > | could you please elaborate?
| > 
| > There are a variety of reasons.
| > 
| > First and foremost is that the GPL is not corporate friendly, which means
| > that larger corporations are unlikely to take on GPLd products in any form.
| 
| An unproven assertion. I have personally witnessed a very large corporation prefer GPL to other licenses, such as BSDish
| ones. Even after legal was through with it (a few times because legal recommended it).

Bottom of the GPL

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
proprietary programs.  If your program is a subroutine library, you may
consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the
library.  If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General
Public License instead of this License.

It's not an unproven assertion it's a stated fact.

| > The second reason is that GPL attracts fanatics.
| 
| As Does BSD. Just look at the BSD zealots that go to GPL forums with flame throwers on their back. Nearly everything
| attracts fanatics.

I haven't heard anyone complain about getting death threats from people
promoting the BSD license...

| Not true. I have personally had more calm conversations, including honest 
| disagreement, than not.

This one has been quite calm, although I have noticed a somewhat
irrational sub-thread has just started. 

| > I have already seen one GPL project have to re-license its code to a
| > company who despite the ranting of some and the calm assurances of others
| > was not convinced that they could even comply with the GPL.
| ...
| > Mozilla -- MPL license.
| 
| Dual license with GPL.
| Sun relicensing StarOffice under a dual license with the GPL.

StarOffice doesn't count, it's not even released yet :-)

| One thing to note, and it is important, is that multiple distributions of Linux OS is irrelevant to the matter of the
| GPL. The Linux Kernel is under GPL, but that does not require the entire OS built on top of it to be. 

Linux is just the kernel.

| Technically speaking, a Linux OS Distribution is a compilation. To say 
| that more than one linux distribution consittutes a fork is false, and 
| rather misleading.

RedHat I believe have their own mods to the kernel, which make it
different. I really don't even know what the 150 are, I'd be struggling
to name more than 5 or 6.

| It is also interesting to note you left out all the GPL work being done 
| by corporations. Corporations such as HP, SUN, and Phillips.

Because i was unaware of it.

| In any event, the original question at the top of this post was not
| answered. As demonstrated, it is a matter of personal preference. 
| It is even more likley, that in this particular case, the contributons 
| wuld not fall under GPL or ZPL.

Well I couldn't answer for Dario, and the part of the two part question
I was trying to answer was "Why would you get *more* back" Toby wasn't
clear as to which part of the question he wanted answered d8)

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