Re:We Love GPLv3, but Are Switching License to Apache 2.0
by endgame on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @04:21PM
(#25351513)
Reading the text of GPLv3 closely, I was disappointed at how little its additional provisions actually protect. It read like it guarded against Tivoisation and not much else, but the world's moved on since then.
GPLv3 either went too far, or not far enough (in terms of cost incurred: gaining enough ground that the community split is worthwhile, volume of license text, ...).
If I had a time machine, I'd suggest the FSF to try frog-boiling people into software freedom instead.
Re:We Love GPLv3, but Are Switching License to Apache 2.0
by JoshTriplett on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @04:58PM
(#25351936)
I do wonder what would have happened in the counterfactual world in which the FSF put out a new version of the GPL annually, with minor changes in each version, rather than a big revision one time. A slow ratchet, together with the guarantee of forward-compatibility.
I also wonder whether many people would have refused to use the GPL if it had had the "or any later version" built in and unremovable, rather than making it part of the license grant.
"scary" from a different perspective is "functional". Many companies also push back against even GPLv2 in anything other than the Linux kernel, and as a result, more people use permissive licenses, even when those permissive licenses run counter to their goals. I've directly seen corporate decision-makers ask "how can we prevent our competitors from using this to compete with us" and yet still choose permissive licensing rather than copyleft, for no obvious or stated reason. That's leaving aside many individual projects using permissive licensing; I wonder how many people doing so specifically want permissive licensing for a concrete reason, and how many just aren't sure and so they pick what seems more prevalent/"acceptable"?
In many contexts, GPL of any flavor is "that thing that the Linux kernel and a few bits of low-level Linux userspace use, and everything else avoids". GPLv3 didn't cause that; widespread corporate pushback against copyleft caused that.