Re: Concerning uniliateral decision making with respect to the coreutils package

Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:40:29 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Guillem Jover <[email protected]> writes:

> On Mon, 2026-07-13 at 12:54:40 +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> Replacing strongly copyleft software with permissively licensed software
>> […]
>> That's part of why we are seeing these efforts to replace GnuPG with
>> Seqoia, […] for
>> generally anything GNU-licensed with anything BSD/Expat-licensed.
>
> This is again and still a wild mischaracterization. :/
>
> <https://lore.kernel.org/distributions/[email protected]/>
>
> To (partially) quote:

I'm not denying people have other arguments too, including your
technical/social arguments.

That doesn't take away that some companies/governments/entities/people
has a dislike for strong copyleft licenses.  It limits their ability to
do what they want to do, which usually include some non-freedom aligned
agenda.

Instead they prefer a non-(strong)copyleft license on software.  Which
is a signal people who are interested in getting funding picks up and
adapt their preference and choices with.

Which of these is the chicken or the egg is probably hard to decide, and
I suspect there is an iterative process.  It is often easier to go with
BSD/Expat to avoid taking a position on copyleft while still being FOSS.

I don't think there is anything surprising or conspiratorical about this
kind of slippery slope, it just makes plain economical/technical/legal
sense for some entitites.  We've seen this for several years, and I
believe it will continue and even grow (compare the python chardet
example, which would accelerate this process if there is no pushback).

/Simon

> ,---
> The reason many upstream projects and distributions are distancing
> themselves from GnuPG (at various speeds), is a thing of GnuPG's
> upstream own making. There's been long standing concerns about its
> UI, security and implementation. Mishandling the OpenPGP RFC process
> and then subsequently getting off it, and not just refusing to implement
> it but in addition creating a schism and a fork in the ecosystem did
> not help matters, which is what has triggered many to seriously look
> into alternative OpenPGP implementations (which thankfully we have many
> to choose from now!). All this has had no relation whatsoever with
> licensing.
>
> (BTW and AFAIR most of Sequoia components are either LGPL or GPL.)
> `---
>
> Regards,
> Guillem
>
>

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