Alan Cox wrote:
However, that is not why a lot of open source software is written, and
a lot that was originally written without such restrictions has
subsequently had the viral GPL applied.
Actually people have spent time working out where the code came from
(usually for marketing reasons so they can claim ther company produced
more than rivals!). There is very little code that has gone from other
free licences to GPL (and where it has you can always take the original).
What? Perl, X, OpenOffice, tar don't qualify as 'very little' and
there's probably a lot more. I though a lot of the original linux
drivers were scalped from the *bsd versions too, with the obvious
refusal to share subsequent improvements. It's odd that you'd bring up
the 'you can always take the orginal' argument since exactly the same
applies to any reason you might think the GPL needs its restrictions.
In each case where code has become GPL it has been *in accordance with the
original licence*.
Yes, it is technically legal to take unrestricted free code and apply
the GPL restrictions, but there can't be any moral justification for
doing that, especially when you then threaten to sue anyone who would
try to repeat that process with different restrictions.
Most GPL code has spent its entire existance being GPL code.
Except for the exceptions..
Even more
positively the amount of GPL and other free licenced code continues to
grown rapidly and it seems exponentially (although clearly that cannot
continue forever!)
Yes, it spreads like a virus as it takes away additional contributors
choices of how their own work can be licensed... But, since it can't
ever provide functionality covered by patented code much of the
development effort is simply a dead end.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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