[cc-licenses] Unbundling the GPL

Joachim Durchholz jo at durchholz.org
Tue Apr 24 04:14:32 EDT 2007


Mike Linksvayer schrieb:
> On Tue, 2007-04-24 at 08:54 +0200, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
>> Software is special, but it's not so special that it warrants 
>> such a massive exception as having just a single license that uses 
>> different language, different legal concepts, etc.
> 
> Path dependency.  A priori software may not be that special.
> Historically, it is.

That explains the choice, but it doesn't justify it (beyond the usual 
"the GPL already does a good deal of what we want, and we don't have 
something better" - which I'd agree with).

> Source-unavailable freeware, source-available payware, shareware, etc.
> have been around for decades.  That no commonly applied licenses for
> these have developed is a huge warning sign.

Let me retort with "path dependency" to this one :-)

For FOSS, RMS has been massively promoting and pushing the issue. (And 
even there, there's a multitude of licenses.)
For non-FOSS, no evangelization has helped shape a standard license. 
Probably because it's less controversial.

> Please ignore this sign and develop and evangelize such licenses.

OK :-)

> When you've achieved massive adoption we could talk about a CC
> wrapper for your licenses like we've done with the GPL.  But I
> recommend first discussing with people who have thought about these
> issues deeply.  Join http://www.crynwr.com/fsb/

I'm not ready to invest a lifetime into this.

However, I'm willing to look up a summary of previous discussions on the 
issue and report. No need to reiterate stale arguments after all!
Is there a URL with such a beast? Reading through the archives of a 
mailing list that discusses many other topics is probably too much time 
for me.

Regards,
Jo



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