GPL-compatible vs Free was Re: For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

Donovan Hawkins hawkins at cephira.com
Wed Aug 22 15:12:12 UTC 2007


On Tue, 21 Aug 2007, Chris Travers wrote:

> Donovan Hawkins wrote:
>> 
>> I wasn't referring to whether the BSDL is considered "free", but rather the 
>> fact that the GPL is.
>
> Whatever I think of their standards of characterizing licenses as Free, GPL 
> compatibility isn't even a requirement.

I never said anything about GPL compatibility. My post was regarding the 
FSF Free Software Definition and why I thought it created an unfortunately 
broad meaning to the word "free" with respect to software. It was a poor 
choice of example to raise in making my point, since the example garnered 
more attention than the point I was trying to make. I should have simply 
pointed out why we need to avoid confusion with open source terminology 
and used the OSI's own work in preserving the Open Source Definition as an 
example of that effort.

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Software Engineer                     safer than biology, for while the
hawkins at cephira.com                   hazards of physics drop off as 1/r^2,
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