"We've been talking, meeting, and arguing over GPL 3 for nearly two years. Recently, the second draft of the long-awaited rewrite of the popular free-software license arrived. But Linus Torvalds wasn't happy with the first draft, and nothing has been modified in the second draft to make him change his mind."
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Member since:2006-06-19
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-08-17
GPLv2 doesn't have issues.
The issue is that some how software managed to become both a product and a work. This is just plain silly.
Patent law doesn't make sense when you apply it to a work and copyright doesn't make sense when you apply it to a product.
Best solution is to remove patents on software, because they never should have been there in the first place.
Member since:2005-07-30
Maybe you should consider the LGPL?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html
And what exact issues are you talking about (other than patents which aren't covered properly in GPL2)?
Member since:2005-07-06
Since there seems to be issues with the GPLv2 (patents,...?) since the GPLv3 is inacceptable.
Why is the GPLv3 inacceptable? Is it because Linus "Bitkeeper is OK for the kernel" Torvalds doesn't like it? Or do you yourself have well founded objections to the current text?
To me, the current draft is a little more eleborate, but still very readable and it still protects the four freedoms. I see no problems with adopting the GPLv3.
Unless you want to do an endrun around the stipulations in the GPLv2 and lock your software behind an electronic DRM padlock. In that case the GPLv3 will be deadly to your master plan of World Domination.
Member since:2005-07-06
I don't have a "well founded" opinion myself. In addition, I am not a lawyer nor a native english speaker, reading lawyer stuff in english is close enough to impossible that I gave it up (though I read through LGPL and GPLv2 I can't say I understood all that much).
However, there are enough people complaining about the implications of the GPLv3 and the shortcoming of the GPLv2 that I worry of their suitability. Considering the dozens of alternatives, considering only the OSI approved licenses, isn't there a license there which is already a good enough compromise that we don't need a new version of the GPL ?
Member since:2005-07-06
I still want to make sure my code stays free.
What license should someone like me choose ?
Depends on what you mean. If you mean that you want YOUR code to stay free, just make it public domain. Now if you wan't to hinder evil (by any defintion you like) from benefitting from you work it's another question. You just has to decide what evil to stop.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Since there seems to be issues with the GPLv2 (patents,...?) since the GPLv3 is inacceptable.
Since I don't want to spend days reading texts written by lawyers and for lawyers, but I still want to make sure my code stays free.
What license should someone like me choose ?