[License-discuss] proposal to revise and slightly reorganize the OSI licensing pages

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

On 6/8/12 12:16 PM, "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

>Quoting Tzeng, Nigel H. (Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu):
>
>> It amazes me that after all these years GPL proponents are still
>> professing willful ignorance as to why some permissive developers see a
>> difference between the two practices.  Go figure.
>
>I am not, and never have been, in any sense a 'GPL proponent', sir.

This conflict has always been between certain factions of the GPL camp and
certain factions of the BSD camp whatever you wish to identify yourself as.


>> Perhaps because a proprietary derivative doesn't impact the potential
>>pool
>> of open source contributors but a GPL derivative does?
>
>Here's something interesting:  I talk about copyleft, and about the
>alleged '{relicensing|sublicensing}' of BSD works actually just turning
>out to refer to creation of derivative works, and someone who wants to
>argue with me starts talking about the GPL, as if there were no other
>copyleft licences.  This is peculiar at the bset of times, but doubly so
>on the OSI's mailing lists.

This comment is disingenuous. Which other copyleft license is both
strongly copyleft and have over zealous proponents? Weak copylefts tend
not to have the same issues or frankly, personalities.

Moreover, this has nothing to do about licenses but the comment you made.

>Anyway, a proprietary derivative permits _zero_ open source contributors,
>right?  Or did I somehow fail to understand what 'proprietary' means?

False.  There have been numerous contributions to permissive projects from
proprietary derivatives and companies that provide contributors to
permissive projects. But that's not the point.

The point is that there is a finite pool of open source developers that do
this for fun on their own time.  A proprietary derivative does not draw
upon this pool except occasionally when they hire someone full time.

Another open source fork does.  And it's a double whammy.  Not only might
some devs work on the fork but that code often never is usable by the
original. This is a point made many times over the years, something you
should be well aware of.

>> Perhaps it is human nature to be annoyed when some very vocal folks
>>claim
>> to be more "free" and that you should respect the spirit of their
>>license
>> but not actually reciprocate that "freedom" with permissive developers
>>or
>> the same level of respect?
>
>_Stallman_ does that, but you seem to be confusing the merits of
>licences with those of their authors.  The meaning of each licence itself
>is confined to its wording and its surrounding legal environment.  By
>contrast, interpersonal soap opera doesn't mean a thing.

I'm not confusing anything.  I have nothing against the GPL or copyleft in
general.  It simply annoyed me that you brought up that idiotic meme once
again.  In this case it has nothing to do with Stallman and everything to
do with your own comment.

I provided this as another well worn example of why some BSD proponents
mind when a GPL project uses their code but not when a proprietary product
uses their code.  You weren't commenting on the merit of licenses but the
merits of the opinions of other developers regarding the use of their code
in GPL projects.

That leads to nothing BUT interpersonal soap opera.

>> Nah, that's only been stated umpteen times over the many years among
>> various other reasons.
>
>Yes, and I'm a BSD user from back to long before Net/2.  Now that you've
>trotted out your prejudices irrelevantly, it'd be nice, as I just got
>through saying, if a few folks stopped assuming I'm new to these topics.

I didn't assume that.  Frankly you should know better than to bring that
old nugget back up again as if you didn't understand why some folks feel
that way.  For the same reason that BSD proponents largely gave up
childishly calling GPL the GNU Public Virus long ago.  All this was gone
over a decade or two ago and made for a bunch of unnecessary bad blood
between the two camps.

So really, what was the point of you bringing it up yet again?  Because
you thought you could get a snarky jab in there and no one would call you
on it?  

Any other Friday that probably would have been true but as I stated, I was
in a bad mood.