Re: Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[Les Mikesell <lesmikesell gmail com>]

Simo Sorce wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-06-29 at 12:39 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> > The GPL is not the only license that protects code released under it
> > from incorporation into proprietary products.  But some clauses in the
> > GPL prevent interoperability with other software that (for whatever
> > reason) was released under different licenses that even the FSF
> > acknowledges are in the spirit of freedom and open source.  That's too
> > bad for free and open-source software.
>
> Copyleft licenses are by nature incompatible with a number of other
> licenses, and it's not because they are 'veil', a brief thinking about
> the reasons for strong copyleft will make it evident why some licenses
> are incompatible with others.

Perhaps there are places who want to prevent better versions than their 
own from ever being available and use this to justify the GPL 
restrictions on combinations with other components.  From a user's 
perspective, though, this is just as harmful as any other 
anti-competitive ploy to limit choices.  And unfortunately, even if the 
business reasons to maintain the restrictions on a particular product go 
away, the restrictions, once applied, never do.

--
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell gmail com