Viral permissiveness

Remco remco47 at gmail.com
Thu Jan 22 17:23:07 UTC 2009


On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Steve Thomas
<steve.thomas.private at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Remco > [..] just as arrogant and altruist-abusing (not my words).
>
> Not your words, but you did choose to use them.

Well, yeah. It's a common rhetoric device. I couldn't find the name,
but I did find a web page that talks about the phenomenon:

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=14210408

Now for some useful words... The Microsoft Reciprocal License may be
what you're looking for. It's a simple license that requires
modifications to the source code to be licensed under the same
license, but doesn't say anything about a binary. It is an end-user
contract license though, so that would be a downside in my opinion.

But Theo DeRaadt would still not like you, since he can't use your
code But then again, his reasoning is a bit strange. Basically he
allows his code to be taken without reciprocity. Yet, when it is taken
in by GPL code, it pisses him off. If such a thing would piss him off,
he should protect himself legally through a copyleft license, which
you're aiming for.

Remco



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