Re: Licensing

On 17 Mar 2005 05:22:44 GMT, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne(at)acm(dot)org> wrote:
>
> The "GPL + Traditional License" approach that MySQL AB is encouraging
> is compatible with the notion that the "market" will consist of a
> single software producer with exclusive ownership of the code base who
> then sell it into a traditional style "proprietary" community of
> customers/consumers.

I think this is a distinct problem with the GPL. I'm being told that
it is not clear in the GPL just what exactly a 'derivitive work' is,
so a company that takes something released under the GPL, and adds
something proprietary to it (like making something specific for
vacation resorts or whatever) would then be required to be released
under the GPL.

Take Zend, for example. I'm told that they had to re-license PHP in
order for them to keep the Zend Engine proprietary, otherwise it would
be seen as a derivitive work. The GPL made it impossible for them to
sell commercial products under a proprietary license as add-ons to a
GPL codebase.

I'm now looking around at all of the largest FOSS projects out there,
and almost none of them are under the GPL. I wonder if that is because
the GPL is anti-business (perhaps even unintentional due to the viral
nature of the GPL itself)?

-- Mitch