Was Microsoft's recent code "donation" forced by the GPL?

Post by startingup » Wed, Jul 22, 2009, 2:46 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #10

jm4 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. It probably does happen all the time. Just last week in one of those GPL vs. BSD threads someone posted a link to a story about how the author of CLISP was more or less coerced into using the GPL license. In any case, through coercion or not, releasing Linux drivers under the GPL is probably the right thing to do. Many users are strongly against loading proprietary binary blobs into their kernel. Still,…

To be fair, the CLISP guy seemed to want to GPL his stuff towards the end of the thread. RMS was, as always, heavy-handed and mentioned legal action before even asking, "hey, do you want to GPL this"? That says nothing about the GPL and a lot about RMS' personality. The end result is that CLISP is one of the better CL implementations, and seems to have a pretty decent following. I don't know if it was like that befor…

Post by jm4 » Wed, Jul 22, 2009, 3:57 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #10

jm4 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. It probably does happen all the time. Just last week in one of those GPL vs. BSD threads someone posted a link to a story about how the author of CLISP was more or less coerced into using the GPL license. In any case, through coercion or not, releasing Linux drivers under the GPL is probably the right thing to do. Many users are strongly against loading proprietary binary blobs into their kernel. Still,…

To be fair, the CLISP guy seemed to want to GPL his stuff towards the end of the thread. RMS was, as always, heavy-handed and mentioned legal action before even asking, "hey, do you want to GPL this"? That says nothing about the GPL and a lot about RMS' personality. The end result is that CLISP is one of the better CL implementations, and seems to have a pretty decent following. I don't know if it was like that befor…

Post by jm4 » Wed, Jul 22, 2009, 4:25 PM UTC

ErrantX wrote: post #12

startingup wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For good or ill, GPL reflects RMS' personality, in much the same way start-ups reflect their founder's personality. GPL is a polemical, political statement, not just a software license. That reflects the fact that RMS is a moral philosopher, not just a programmer. This is not to say that we should judge GPL by RMS' personality - GPL, just like companies people create, will stand on its own; all I am saying is that GP…

Agreed. Stallman strongly believes stuff should be free (not a bad atitude) and so the GPL tends to force things to be free in sequence. Personally I find the GPL distasteful; because it locks you in. Frustrating (and I cant help feeling causes substantial code duplication for some projects that dont want to use GPL code) (disclaimer; Im not personally a fan of Stallman, so I might be a bit biased over it)

Post by ErrantX » Wed, Jul 22, 2009, 11:16 PM UTC

xiaoma wrote: post #16

ErrantX wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Stallman strongly believes stuff should be free (not a bad atitude) and so the GPL tends to force things to be free in sequence. Personally I find the GPL distasteful; because it locks you in. Frustrating (and I cant help feeling causes substantial code duplication for some projects that dont want to use GPL code) (disclaimer; Im not personally a fan of Stallman, so I might be a bit biased over it)

" Personally I find the GPL distasteful; because it locks you in. Frustrating (and I cant help feeling causes substantial code duplication for some projects that dont want to use GPL code) " Were there any licenses prior to the GPL that didn't do that? Surely you couldn't just take a piece of IBM or AT&T's code and put it into your programs with no strings attached. That era was before my time, so please educate me i…