Re: License survey

["Luka Marčetić" <paxcoder@gmail.com>]

On 02/19/2012 05:12 AM, Rich Felker wrote:
> What would be your ideal license to see musl under?

Hey Rich,
Ah, you know the implications of (non)copyleft as well as we do. I'd 
show the flaws in reasoning of those who advocate permissive licenses, 
but I'm getting tired of the discussion. Instead of philosophizing about 
how freedom to leech is bad (oops?), I'll just present a list of facts. 
You and I know this, and others do too, but if I try and be objective, 
maybe there's some perspective to be gained on either side. I hope both 
sides can agree that:

  ° Permissiveness has a potential for more contributors and bug reports *
  ° Permissiveness supports development of proprietary products
  ° Copyleft is somewhat harder to apply, harder still to properly 
explain **
  ° Copyleft ensures reciprocity via legal restrictions on derivatives
  ° GPLv3 adds restrictions on patents and tivoization

* Current trend is favoring permissive projects (Webkit, LLVM, 
web-related tech, Apache) over GPL'd ones (GCC, Linux). Apart from the 
hardworking BSD community, this may be caused by companies' FUD 
regarding GPL, or the exact opposite - their understanding of GPL. 
Hopefully, free software can emancipate from proprietary software makers 
in the future.
** Though some free help is available from SFLC, both for explaining and 
enforcing (GPL).

Entering the subjective mode again, just to address the second point. I 
am of opinion that companies, if enabled to produce non-free software 
based on free software, should at least compensate the community for it 
(or else, use another, possibly inferior, solution). In reality, 
however, the adoption by a commercial entity might be what brings you 
money. With that said, anything GPLv3-related is good in my book, but 
it's your decision. Not sure if this helps...

Good luck,
-Luka