The Free Software Foundation has published the first draft of the GPL v3, the successor to the most popular open source license. The rationale behind some of the changes are here, while comments are here. Danese Cooper of OSI has posted her comments too. Update: Stallman: "We've partly removed the inconveniences of preventing a user from combining code from various free software packages." More here.
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Member since:2005-07-06
manmist: Why not rewrite that tiny weeny 1% GPL code if you want to keep your product proprietary?. This complaint seem very very weak to me.
Yes, you can possibly do that. The problem is that it may be a piece of software that the developers of the larger program may be completely unfamiliar with other than how to use it.
An example of this would be some assembly code for say an operating system. The makers of the new operating system may know how to do everything but what that piece of assembly does. They also may not know assembly for that particular processor and they may not have access to the documentation for the assembly language for that processor. Etc... As a result they may be at this time pretty well stuck.
Of course... As I said before... I would think if they got that far they could find a way to resolve it. I mean really... If you have everything but that... And you know what the problem is (and they should know that) then given a little bit of time, yes, I would think they could find a solution. For example, acquire the documentation for the assembly language for that processor and teach yourself how to do it, then replace that code.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-12-18
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The only problem I really have with the GPL is the whole linking thing making you have to GPL your code too. That, in my opinion, really hurts it."
That in my opinion has made it the world's most popular Free software license and to a significant extend the sauce of Linux's success in the server with organisations like Red Hat, IBM, Intel etc contributing large majority of the code.
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html
Member since:
2005-12-18
"I think he's talking about a situation where say 99.9% of the code was developed by someone who doesn't want to make their software "free". And that the last say 0.1% was taken from a project that falls under the GPL.
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Why not rewrite that tiny weeny 1% GPL code if you want to keep your product proprietary?. This complaint seem very very weak to me.