New Essay - "FOSS Licences Wars"

[Steve Litt]

On Saturday 22 August 2009 03:21:13 you wrote:
> On Friday 21 August 2009 22:07:17 Steve Litt wrote:

> > I disagree with some of your
> > conclusions, but obviously your facts are spot on.
>
> Thanks. I would be happy to hear any arguments you have against my
> conclusions. Maybe I'll change my opinions.

OK, here's an example. You implied in a few places that if software 1 was GPL, 
software 2 never would have existed, but if software 1 was MIT/BSD, software 2 
would have existed though possibly not as free software. For instance:

========================
"My response is that this was indeed a problem and inconvenienced the users of 
Exceed. However, if X-Windows were GPLed, then the people who made Exceed and 
wanted to sell it, would not have made it in the first place, because they had 
to make it GPLed and keep it as FOSS. So either they would have implemented it 
from scratch or not at all."
========================

My opinion is they very well might have made an Exceed GPL package, depending 
on how much of their incentive was selling software (notice I didn't say 
"making money"), vs how much priority was scratching an itch on Windows.

Then there's this:
========================
Furthermore, If X11 had been initiated under a non-BSD-style-licence, then it 
is possible it would not have become as ubiquitous as it is in the UNIX world, 
thus making it irrelevant to port it to Windows in the first place.
========================

My opinion would be the opposite -- it would have been adopted even more 
universally  had it been GPL. After all, the GPL Linux kernel plus the GNU 
utilities greatly "outsold" the older and more established BSDs.

I think a lot of people (including me) like GPL's guarantee that they're not 
doing unpaid work for Microsoft (or Apple). My experience with VimOutliner, 
which is the only one of my free software projects that actually attracted 
other developers, indicates that its GPL nature is attractive to developers.

My view is license should depend on use. For instance, it's fine that 
VimOutliner is GPL because it's not a development tool and it's unlikely 
someone would use its parts to make something else.

On the other hand, my Node.pm tool 
(http://www.troubleshooters.com/projects/Node/index.htm) is meant as a 
development tool that I wanted to be able to produce a proprietary program, so 
I made it GPL with an exception 
(http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/projects/Node/COPYING.LPDTL.1.0).

Another use of some restrictive licenses is to make war on software patents, 
which I think almost everyone believes to be unnecessary and obnoxious.

Another use of restrictive licenses is to prevent things similar to the 
kerberos mess. See 
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/major/mtc-00029523.htm and search for 
Kerberos to see what I'm talking about.

I do completely understand the attractiveness of the MIT license. It's simple 
and can't come back to bite you later. I'm just saying the GPL has plenty of 
benefits.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
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http://www.recession-relief.US
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