Leaving the GPL Behind

olddotter points out a story up at Yahoo Tech on companies' decisions to distance themselves from the GPL. "Before deciding to pull away from GPL, Haynie says Appcelerator surveyed some two dozen software vendors working within the same general market space. To his surprise, Haynie saw that only one was using a GPL variant. 'Everybody else, hands down, was MIT, Apache, or New BSD,' he says. 'The proponents of GPL like to tell people that the world only needs one open source license, and I think that's actually, frankly, just a flat-out dumb position,' says Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, one of the many organizations now offering an open source license with more generous commercial terms than GPL."

Comments

RMS disallows free use of his words

[Anonymous Coward]

InfoWorld tried to interview Richard Stallman, who runs the Free Software Foundation that created and manages the GPL, on this issue, but he demanded control of what we published, so we declined.

Pity RMS couldn't have released his source words under some kind of open license so others could use it.

Re:who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true. The only thing I love more than sharing code is sharing my ass.

Re:who gives a fuck?

[V!NCENT]

First they ignore you, then laugh at you, then hate you... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMzJo_q2vhk)

We're now at the fighting part. That's the last milestone according to Red Hat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBUgEx_91BU) at least. It won't be long until FLOSS wins.

Just. Give. It. Up.

Re:Indian Giver? You insensitive clod!

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother was an indian giver

Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

And, um, what's your mom's number?

Re:who gives a fuck?

[dword]

Hey, put down that chair!

Re:Yup, beware of fascists... they are over THERE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, I don't get the business with the sticks and knives.

Could you repost this using a car analogy?

Thanks!

Re:This isn't sensationalist, it's the truth

[julesh]

One could only imagine how Linux would have turned out with a BSD or Apache license; we might have ended up with a situation where Windows, OS-X and Linux apps were all compatible or atleast much easier to port.

Or maybe we'd all be running GNU Hurd by now.

Re:Yup, beware of fascists... they are over THERE!

[rohan972]

Nobody is going to put you in the GNU/Death Camps.

So you admit they exist then.

You are correct, nobody will put you in them. Indeed, you must assemble the GNU/Death Camp yourself. The chain-link fence, razor wire, etc. are available for you to use under the terms of the GNU/DCL. If you are having trouble with assembly or use of GNU/Death Camps, don't even think about posting questions here unless you've RTFM, googled it and searched the mailing list archives.

Analogy Fail

[raehl]

Your analogy assumes the only options are GPL and Copyright - for sake of analogy, let's call them mushrooms and dirt. If you are hungry, and your options are mushrooms or dirt, mushrooms will look pretty good. But what if your options are mushrooms, dirt, chicken nuggets, BBQ ribs, or steak? Sure, if you're a fascist vegetarian, you might still go for the mushrooms, but no one is going to take you seriously if you just run around screaming about how all anyone should eat are mushrooms, because they're much better than dirt.

If copyright is the least free, then licenses like BSD are *MORE* free than GPL, because they grant an even WIDER license to use the software than the GPL does.