From the point of view of the owner of the software, I can see how you can think that your intention matters more than the word of the license. It's wrong in a legal sense, of course, but it makes some kind of sense of you say "nah, we'd never sue for that".
first to say, the interpretation will be different in different legal regimes, but.. here in the USA, I believe that the copyright holder is the title that determines who gets the say about changes to the license.
But many projects are years and years old, with many many contributors. Getting them to relicense is a burden that they don’t see the worth in if they cannot first agree on the pessimistic interpretation of the license
1. If you’re not touching the core code, it’s not under the GPL. I try and get them to LGPL license the extension points but they don’t see the benefit in trying to relicense it with all their contributors.
2. For your second point, the issue is that the GPL is intentionally vague as a deterrent for corporate abuse. The issue becomes that, as a corporate user: I have to take the most pessimistic view to protect myself. If I switch my hat to someone non corporate, then I take the most optimistic view. In those cases, they often say to not take the pessimistic view because that’s not the spirit as they understand it.
> 1. If you’re not touching the core code, it’s not under the GPL. I try and get them to LGPL license the extension points but they don’t see the benefit in trying to relicense it with all their contributors.
I sense this comes down to a really poor definition of "linking" (is that the word in the text? Can't remember and don't have it to hand).
It's not at all obvious for each software/language ecosystem which specific act constitutes "linking".
> 2. For your second point, the issue is that the GPL is intentionally vague as a deterrent for corporate abuse. The issue becomes that, as a corporate user: I have to take the most pessimistic view to protect myself. If I switch my hat to someone non corporate, then I take the most optimistic view. In those cases, they often say to not take the pessimistic view because that’s not the spirit as they understand it.
100%, and this is my gripe against things like the BSL too. It's disingenuous because the aim of the license is to create risk and uncertainty through poor definitions and vagueness.
It’s really not, the aim of the GPL is to preserve freedom to tinker and reuse for all users.
If that’s not something you’re wanting to do, then it’s best not to use GPL components.
I'm just not convinced that the lack of clarity which tends to steer large companies away from such software is just a bug, not a feature.
this is literally FALSE
no the GPL was intentionally set the way it was.. vague is not the word for that IMHO.. thirty+ years of computer markets has brought every possible challenge plus a few more. So the original LICENSE has been deeply scrutinized and the markets have changes... the parts that needed clarification have had changes as a result.
"vague" is mildly insulting, and there is plenty of that going on as part of this discussion.
> the GPL is about the spirit of the license, not the exact words. They often say not to worry about litigation.
Even weirder. Especially since then, why pick the GPL at all? The only reasons I can see is that you care about free software, and want virality for that reason, and/or you want companies to pick a commercial license.