Re: GNAT GPL 2005: Too clever by half?

["Marc A. Criley" <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com>]

Brian May wrote:
>>>>>>"Marc" == Marc A Criley <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com> writes:
> 
> 
>     Marc> If you're hard over to free software, GPL GNAT 2005 is just
>     Marc> fine and dandy, since it'll force people to make their
>     Marc> software free (libre), which is the goal of the FSF.
> 
> The problem, as Samuel Tardieu has already mentioned, is that not all
> "free software" uses the GPL.
> 
> There are heaps of other licenses out there, from Apache license,
> openssl license, BSD license, libstdc++ license, LGPL, just to mention
> the first ones that come to the top of my head.
> 
> It is simply not possible to convert all of these projects to use the
> GPL (or GPL compatible[1]) licenses, no matter how much Richard
> Stallman would like this.

But this isn't a problem for a developer that is an adherent of the free 
(libre) software development philosophy of Stallman, et.al.  If you want 
to use that developer's GPLed software, you have to have a compatible 
license.  If you can't or won't employ such a license, then it's your 
loss, you can't use the software.

Conversely, if the developer would like to freely exploit GPL software, 
but doesn't buy into FOSS theology, by actually making their code GPL 
they seriously limit what developers using non-GPL compatible licenses 
can do with it.  Almost like proprietary software.

I'm not passing judgement on these approaches to the use or misuse of 
the GPL, I'm just finding that there may be different utilizations of it 
that arise from a developer's motivation.

-- Marc A. Criley
-- McKae Technologies
-- www.mckae.com
-- DTraq - XPath In Ada - XML EZ Out