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[20061101]
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Thoughts on the old GPL vs. BSD license squabbling
This one was pointed out by Olaf Seibert (thanks!):
When trying to convince people that the GPL is so much better
than the BSD license, one argument that you hear a lot is that
GPL forces people (and companies!) to open up their code
for the benefit of everyone. Nice idea - but is it true?
Harald Welte, who's done a lot for making people understand
what the GPL is and is not
(e.g. with his GPL Violations project)
has drawn
some conclusions
on that benefit:
``if somebody asks me, how much the actual Free Software source code benefits from the code that was released by the vendors, my honest reply would be simple and sad: None.''
There are other benefits like public awareness, community
building etc. that are also of importance to the whole
Open Source community, and that a software license may or may not
have an impact on, so this may be up for further discussion.
Making code available at least is not what the GPL helps about,
so I guess
the BSD license isn't that bad after all.
Surprise! :)
[Tags: gpl, licensing]
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