We Don't Need the GPL Anymore

jpkunst writes "In a lengthy interview with Eric S. Raymond by Federico Biancuzzi at O'Reilly's onlamp.com, ESR defends his position that 'Open source would be succeeding faster if the GPL didn't make lots of people nervous about adopting it.'" From the article: "I don't think the GPL is the principal reason for Linux's success. Rather, I believe it's because in 1991 Linus was the first person to find the right social architecture for distributed software development. It wasn't possible much before then because it required cheap internet; and after Linux, most people who might otherwise have founded OS projects found that the minimum-energy route to what they wanted was to improve Linux. The GPL helped, but I think mainly as a sort of social signal rather than as a legal document with teeth."

Comments

Re:He's right, of course

[NekkidBob]

There is nothing ethically wrong with what MS did either. The whole ideals behind BSD was it was free for anyone to use for any purpose. They encouraged people to adopt their code, and the BSD's still do today. The whole BSD philosiphy is to give quality code to the community, to use as they see fit. Not to have others do your development for you, which is what the GPL wants, since it requires you to send your changes to the author.

Re:ESR on drugs

[MoneyT]

Why should you get those 10 lines back? If it's so trivial, do it yourself you god damn freeloader.