There is so much controversy surrounding the Open Source General Public License (GPL) – especially with regard to the SCO v IBM case – that it makes a sense to review the simple basic legal points involved, writes Bloor Research president Robin Bloor.
General Public License – a Summary Guide
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
for the people by the people, cannot turn proprietarize. It favors hobbyists and consumors. Business puts more R&D. I think the long term support-based profit on the GPL will fail in the long run but succeed in the short run as GPL’d software matures and becomes more friendly. No wonder businesses love the BSD! Oh wait some of them jump on the bandwagon because its some huge social change and you HAVE to ride it or your going to go bankrupt.
In other news, I think the GPL is great for establishing an industry standard platform and for dieing software
http://www.it-director.com/article.php?articleid=11819
Open Source General Public License (GPL)
s/Open Source/GNU/
…Or The Register link should be corrected to: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/05/general_public_license_a_su…
“for the people by the people, cannot turn proprietarize. It favors hobbyists and consumors”
Your statement is only true if you believe consumers do not benefit from proprietary software and by extension businesses.
Businesses need support and legal protections hobbyists and open source cannot provide.
Should I even state the fact businesses provide jobs and are therefore a (imo)better benefit to society since they provide jobs and economic stimulus?
No I better not mention that….at least not here.
This is something that is not only informative to the Linux community but as well to those that are unfamiliar with Linux (ie: Windows users and some writers/editors of news services). Articles such as this help to educate the mass population instead of a select few.
Thanks Eugenia
Oi!
The GPL is not an Open Source license. It’s a Free Software license.
The sooner we realise that the main reason we have the GPL and GNU/Linux system is because certain people saw freedom a being important, the sooner we’ll understand why GNU/Linux and Free Software in general are so important to society.
Free Software, Free Society.
Proprietary software – Dictatorship.
“”Proprietary software – Dictatorship.””
I can’t actually think of a dictatorship where participation was voluntary. Can you provide an example?
The GPL is not an Open Source license. It’s a Free Software license.
I’m afraid that I cannot agree with you. The GPL is far from “free,” as it is one of the most restrictive open source licenses that you can find. The purpose of the license, contrary to what RMS says, and what you believe, is to keep the source code open, and in order to do so, they utilize restrictions to limit the ability of people to make the software closed and proprietary.
The wording of the license and its effect lean more toward “open source” than either you or RMS would like to admit, if you could ever even accept it.
Freedom is a lack of restrictions, not a large number of well intended ones.
Maybe its just me, but if you mean for releasing software, I can’t see why buisnesses would like the BSD license. If I owned a buisness and was releasing software under an open license, I wouldn’t want to use the bsd license. By doing that, you allow others to “embrace and extend” your technology so that its no longer compatable, and under no obligation to release their modifications. If I release something, I would want to make sure that all modifications would be added to the base product. Other than that, I have to agree with you on all other points(especially on dieing software)