[asterisk-biz] OT: Licensing preferences

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Thu, 2008-04-03 at 11:46 -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> Just curious why you look at it that way, Bret.
> 
> The only reason I could see why someone would decline to contribute
> to a GPLd project would seem to be handily dealt with merely by
> dual-licensing your code GPL and BSD.
> 

You suggested that I release my code under a dual license including the
gpl in response to me saying I wont release gpl.  Uhh come on you can be
more clever that that.  I dont release gpl code anymore (since 1998)
asking me to release gpl isnt going to make that happen.

There are license problems that arise when you do dual license, for
example the gpl cannot co-exist with anything else, when it is used with
something else it takes over.

So lets say that someone releases gpl/bsd dual license stuff.  Ok, but
what happens when someone wants to make it bsd only?  You cant stop
that, nor can you stop a gpl only variant (although that is easier to
do, 1 line of gpl code causes 100M lines of non gpl code to magically
become gpl).  

At the end of the day when you do a multi-license release you are
effectively granting someone permission to pick the license that applies
and will apply to privately maintained contributions, which further
excludes the other license(s) from coming back.

Case and point mozilla does a tri license, gpl,mpl and I believe bsd.
Now the gpl and mpl are incompatible with each other.  They cannot
co-exist (by definition anything that does not let the gpl take over
100% is incompatible, anything that does let it take over is
compatible).  Now if I take the mozilla code, whichever one it may be,
and use it with a mpl project (or add in stuff that is mpl compatible
but gpl incompatible) how can the multi-license gpl part survive?

The reality is that dual licensing may seem good on paper but when you
actually look at what happens, you are giving people the right to choose
the license that they like best.  Now if asterisk were to do that I
would contribute in a heart beat.  But that isnt likely to happen.  

Of course that creates a licensing nightmare, using teh same mozilla
tri-license example, if I contribute MPL only code then it cannot be
allowed in any GPL release since the MPL only is GPL incompatible.
Which means that all contributions have to be under all the licenses (or
at least compatible).


> On the other hand, it may be that you're complaining about *having to
> assign your copyright to Digium*, which would be an entirely different
> issue: you would be unhappy that they could then themselves dual-license
> it commercially.

> Is that the situation that troubles you?
> 

no, did I say that was the situation that troubled me?  I thought I was
clear when I said that I do not release gpl stuff.  And you dont assign
copyright to digium anyway, you just give them full rights to use it
however they see fit, you still retain copyright, and you still can do
whatever you want with your code.  If you assigned copyright to digium,
you would have to ask their permission to use it, and that is not the
case, further the copyright notices would only say digium and would not
say the individual author if it were assigned.  

I never once even implied that this was the issue, so I dont know how
you got to this point.  

So to be clear, yet again, I personally started refusing to contribute
code to gpl released products in 1998.  I personally do not release
anything gpl or contribute code to gpl projects.  It is a personal
choice, it is one that I made after many contributions dating back to
the early 90s.  I will tell people specifically what is wrong, as I have
done in the past with asterisk specifically as well as other programs,
but I will not contribute any code as long as it is licensed gpl.


My reasons for this is all the harm that the gpl causes to open source
developers and how it makes it harder to be an open source developer.
In short this is not the appropriate place to discuss how the gpl harms
open source, so I will just close now.

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
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