From: Carsten H. (T. R. <ra...@ra...> - 2008-07-24 15:18:59
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On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:33:13 -0400 Jose Gonzalez <jos...@ju...> babbled: > Ah yes, the licensing issue. Is it something which has helped or > hindered the "E" project? Who knows. There are several other factors besides > that one which one could point to as well, it's possible those may even be > intertwined with this one... Again, who really knows for certain. > > One could try and compare the 'success' of similar LGPL vs. MIT/BSD > licensed projects... perhaps the Linux Kernel vs. other MIT/BSD-licensed > kernels? Perhaps in the gfx world, things like X say? Ummm, no real LGPL > equivalent to X, so we might only consider whether X has received as much > help/resources as similarly important projects -- I'd say it falls pretty > short there. Perhaps compare the success of GPL/LGPL vs. MIT/BSD licensed gui > toolkits/frameworks? Ummm, I guess Mono and E's, would fall in the latter > camp, but most others in the former. i have to say now.. success in the open source world is utterly UNRELATED to what kind of open source license you use. it is a hindrance if you are not open. in fact GPL as a license for a library can be a hindrance. i could quote lots of examples - but i've been around these traps for a very long time now and license is neither here nor there. our license (BSD + advertising) has never to my knowledge been a hindrance to us. also you can't just make a blanket statement of license being good or bad - you need to look at the use case. an app? a library? an icon set? a wallpaper?... a simplistic view is just not possible. (and yes - x has had competitors... LGPL ones - directfb for example? and they have not supplanted or replaced X. but this has nothing to do with license). > What are the reasons people prefer one type of license over another.. > and does that affect the number or quality of contributors or contributions? > Again, who knows. I don't like licenses in the software world - I think it's > abhorrent. But unfortunately, their existance and that of patents is very > real so both corps and individuals have to make a decision. > Personally, I'd *never* contribute anything that I'd consider to be a > truly serious, dedicated, body of time and work to a project that wan't LGPL > or GPL. But that's just me. personally i think license is the least of problems. anyone smart enough - i they can read your code and algorithm, can duplicate it - even without copying. they have stolen your "secret sauce" (ie. oooh so that's how that works!). licenses will never stop that as they simply used your code to learn the trick. patents are meant to protect against this above... BUT... are also our biggest danger. chance are we already violate dozens if not hundreds of patents - and we don't even know about it. patents are a clear and present danger and issue to worry about - not licenses. you can come up with a cool idea or solution and instantly violate a patent - and not know about it until the lawyers turn up. the patent system for software is just broken and as such impacts us all. if you cared as much about the legalities of patents - which are far more dangerous, than you do of licenses, you may as well give up writing software. you probably violated a patent just thinking about patents! :) -- ------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" -------------- The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) ra...@ra... |