Draft 1 of the OpenDesk.com Public Source License

[Arandir]

On Wed, 17 Nov 1999, David Starner wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 17, 1999 at 07:56:02PM -0800, Arandir wrote:
> > On Wed, 17 Nov 1999, David Starner wrote:
> > 
> > > > This is equivalent to forking the project at the start, unless you add
> > > > an addendum to the GPL that stipulates that GPL contributors permit you
> > > > to take their changes and re-release them under the APSL clone. Of
> > > > course, then it's not GPL anymore.
> > > 
> > > It's possible that it will get forked. Of course, that's possible with
> > > any license that's not a copyleft.
> > 
> > Copyleft can get forked just as easily. Compare GNU emacs versus XEmacs.
> 
> Not just as easily. RMS could, at any time, merge in any changes from XEmacs
> to GNU Emacs. He just choses not to. (He has his reasons, but it is his 
> choice.) With a copyleft, you can always merge in their changes if you chose
> to.

But what makes this situation different from non-copyleft Free Software? In the
cases of BSD, MIT and Artistic, the changes can be merged into the forks no
problem. Cross-pollination is not limited to GNU licensed programs.

Whether a project forks or not seems to be determined by factors very distant
from the specific licenses.

-- 
Arandir...
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<http://www.meer.net/~arandir/>