Re: Mission statement and 1.1 license issues

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 12:21:10PM -0800, Paul Vojta wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 11:49:09AM +0000, Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote:
> > On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, John Bradford wrote:
> > 
> > > For example, in my opinion, it would be a good service to the existing
> > > user-base to go through and audit all the code, and either remove and
> > > replace code which is under very restrictive licenses, or ask the
> > > copyright holders to re-license it.
> > > 
> > > Of course, this doesn't fit in with the stated goals in the mission
> > > statement.
> > 
> > Maybe it is just not a very interesting task for current developers ?
> > Have you asked whether such work would be accepted it submitted ? 
> 
> Would such work be accepted if submitted?

Why wouldn't it?  There is a significant amount of work that would have
to be done though, e.g. to replace something like GLX, and the only
benefit would be improving license compatibility, which is not a
tangible gain for most people.  To me, that seems like a pretty good
formula for nothing to get done in the long run; dubious gains for
significant outlay in effort.

But, if we want to be compatible with the FSF's interpretation of the
GPL, it will have to be done anyway.  It seems like a better idea in the
long run to get the FSF to fix the GPL.

It would be nice if the GPL did not enforce a strict sub-set upon
licenses suitable for combined works.  Certainly there are terms that
distributors can put on their work that are not non-free but are
nevertheless not enumerated in the GPL.  With the GPL v2, nobody can
place any additional terms on their work which is subsequently combined
with a GPL work, even if they are not non-free terms, simply because the
GPL disallows _any_ additional terms that are not already part of the
GPL.  That seems silly considering the GPL's goal is ostensibly to
increase the availability of free software, not of GPL-compatible
software.

Of course, that doesn't help the legacy apps that are released
specifically under GPLv2.

-- 
Ryan Underwood, <[email protected]>

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