I would say there was a time when we needed the GPL more widely, as a protective shield that allowed open source to take root. And there are still cases where the GPL is appropriate, as it does offer excellent protections for products which are meant to be "share-and-share-in-kind," such as Linux. It additionally makes dual-licensing possible, whereby you can either comply with the GPL or pay the developer for commercial use.
All that said, I agree that the GPL is often the wrong choice, for the reasons you stated. The philosophy behind it is often as divisive as Steve Ballmer's "don't **** with Microsoft".
I am a strong believer in the four software freedoms, but I also believe in a fifth: the freedom to share. A developer should have the basic right to truly share what they created with others, not be forced to lock it down to the GPL because it touched GPL code in some manner.
(For the record, I'm a card-carrying member of the OSI.)
My name is Matteo and I'm a cloud solution architect and tech enthusiast. In my spare time, I work on open source software as much as I can. I simply enjoy writing software that is actually useful.
I love OSI. I'm thinking about getting a membership myself. The movement OSI promote is exactly what I imagine when thinking about open source. In contrast, I think of the FSF as something too extremist and dictatorial to be really sane and useful for both us developers and our usere
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We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
I would say there was a time when we needed the GPL more widely, as a protective shield that allowed open source to take root. And there are still cases where the GPL is appropriate, as it does offer excellent protections for products which are meant to be "share-and-share-in-kind," such as Linux. It additionally makes dual-licensing possible, whereby you can either comply with the GPL or pay the developer for commercial use.
All that said, I agree that the GPL is often the wrong choice, for the reasons you stated. The philosophy behind it is often as divisive as Steve Ballmer's "don't **** with Microsoft".
I am a strong believer in the four software freedoms, but I also believe in a fifth: the freedom to share. A developer should have the basic right to truly share what they created with others, not be forced to lock it down to the GPL because it touched GPL code in some manner.
(For the record, I'm a card-carrying member of the OSI.)
I love OSI. I'm thinking about getting a membership myself. The movement OSI promote is exactly what I imagine when thinking about open source. In contrast, I think of the FSF as something too extremist and dictatorial to be really sane and useful for both us developers and our usere