There are a lot of people passionate, even “religious”, about the open source licensing that they tend to prefer. There are even some people who allegedly insist on certain license types. Steadfastness? Maybe. Hypocrisy? Perhaps. Controversial? Absolutely.
Matt’s recent post definitely re-opened that proverbial can o’ worms, with plenty of folks, both the heavily-published, and individual developers, and even the casual tech readers, voicing their opinions and concerns. Unfortunately, the typical responses range from the unhelpful (“I like/hate this because I do!”) to the tangential (“Buy my GPL themes!”) to the confused (“What is GPL and why is it so different from open source?”), all the way to the apathetic yet noise-inducing (“I don’t know why people are arguing about this.”).
An interesting, valid counterpoint was provided by Daniel Jalkut (Red Sweater Software) entitled “Getting Pretty Lonely“. And this led to Matt’s reply-post, entitled “Not Lonely at All“. If you are a developer and trying to stay within the letter and intent of licensing terms while struggling with architectural and design issues and customer requirements, you’ve probably encountered licensing issues already.
Despite what some may tell you, deciding to use GPL software in the real world, is not as easy and straightforward as some think. Being accosted by a team of IP attorneys from a company that sells “GPL’ed” software, demanding to have full access to all of your source code (and a lot of money) because your company “bought” their software and made some modifications to it and used it within the enterprise… not pleasant. Sure, it’s a fishing expedition (like the insertion point of a tech/industrial espionage mission), and annoying, and most likely without merit, but it throws a nasty wrench into conducting business, and brings into question for many management teams whether GPL, and open source in general, is really worth the headaches of encountering creative lawyers. Depending on the size of your company and corporate coffers, the constant threat of time-consuming lawsuits may embolden your risk management team to strongly advise against GPL or even all open source. Nothing between public domain or well-understood commercial proprietary licenses is acceptable…?
Is it surprising that some developers and lawyers interpret “distribution” or “redistribution” as merely viewing a Web page that was generated by software? Not really. Is it surprising that developers and lawyers who are for or against GPL terms will leverage the ambiguity in the text of the licensing to their own advantage? Nope.
Is there room for all of these different licenses– public domain, open source, closed source, etc.– in the real world? Definitely a strong maybe. Like the world’s religions, it seems that it filters down to interpretation and what you are accustomed to.
N.B.
The “quotes” I included parenthetically in the main text aren’t actual quotes, just humorous paraphrasing of actual responses.
And for those of you who think that there’s no place for public domain licensing today: consider SQLite, which is one of the most widely distributed packages worldwide. And read about the concerns about public domain…
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