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We Don't Need the GPL Anymore

Posted by Zonk on from the man-with-the-plan dept.

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."

2 of 919 comments (clear)

  1. More than ever. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Funny, I'd say we've never needed it more than now.

  2. Re:Other licenses are becoming more common by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Both of those are dual-licensed. You can buy a commercial license for MySQL, and Perl is optionally covered by the Artistic license.