Re: Again: list of advantages of the xGPL

On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, Roland wrote:

> Look, I didn't say that the BSDL hasn't its merits. I just gave an example 
> of a successfull GPL project where there is an BSD equivalent. And in the 
> example of Linux you can see that the BSD pie is NOT larger. So your 
> assumption(that the BSD pie would be larger than the GPL equivalent) is 
> wrong, at least in the general case.

I don't think that there's a general case at all.  Some projects will be 
larger and more active than others, and I don't think it's necessarily a 
function of the license itself in any significant way, at least when it 
comes to variations between open licenses of one sort or another...

> Personally I also like the BSDL more, although I have to agree that the 
> GPL has also its merits and MAYBE in some situations it is superior.

I've said before, it depends a lot on the situation.  I suspect that large, 
vital, active projects (like Apache or Linux) may be better served by BSD 
licensing, while smaller projects may benefit more from copyleft protection 
in some form...

> Sometimes those decisions are not entirely rational. Some people might 
> prefer the GPL just because they sympathise with its ideology etc...

This is extremely common.  And Stallman deliberately fosters attitudes such 
as this...

> It may happen that objectively a BSDL would be better for a given project, 
> but in practice it might turn out that only few developers will join 
> because many are biased towards the GPL. So if you choose the GPL you will 
> suddenly attract much more coders.

You'll attract the GPL advocates, while turning away non-GPL people.  Where 
does the balance lie?  It's not clear.

It seems the most effective solution is to use multiple simultaneous open 
licenses, as Mozilla is aiming to do with MPL/GPL/LGPL triple-licensing, or 
as Perl has always done with Artistic/GPL licensing.  That way, even the 
most rabid GPL zealots tend to be satisfied, because the code is available 
under their treasured GPL, while the GPL skeptics are also content because 
they're not bound by the GPL's viral restrictions.  And most people seem 
content to leave the multiple licenses intact -- even Stallman recommends 
doing so, for the sake of harmony.

So maybe the best approach, ugly as it is, is to use as many of the common 
open licenses as you're comfortable with, to keep everyone happy.  If you 
want to use the BSD license, use BSD/MPL/GPL/LGPL to discourage someone 
from relicensing your code to use in a MPL, GPL or LGPL project, etc.

This seems the closest thing to a workable compromise that exists...

> On the other hand you may choose the BSDL and a company starts using the 
> codebase and giving back many improvements, so the BSDL proves successfull.
> BUT on the same scenario it may also happen that a company doesn't give 
> back many improvements, hires away the best developers of that project and 
> leaves it to stagnation while the proprietary fork is steadily improving.

Yup, that's possible.  Of course, one of the reasons they can hire away the 
best developers to work on the code is that they've usually been doing free 
work on a volunteer basis.  If we could fund development, they'd have a job 
and be getting paid already to work on the public project, and wouldn't be 
quite so easily lured into a proprietary company instead...

> So how can you know? Reality is too complex. We see examples of GPL 
> projects that are succesfull(Linux), and we see examples of BSD examples 
> that are successfull(Apache, FreeBSD, etc...).

Yup, and I think that's more a function of the project than the license...

> Imagine for a minute that Linux where under the BSDL and Apache, FreeBSD 
> where GPLed. I dare to say it wouldn't make much of a difference for those 
> projects. Please prove me wrong...

I think they would all remain vital and active under either license.

Of course, under the GPL, they'd lost the possibility of getting some 
benefit from the work of proprietary vendors -- so maybe they'd be better 
off using the BSD license?

Deven