RE: GNU GPL

[Loic Dachary]

Sean Doherty writes:

 > My aim in writing the article was to explain the problems in open
 > source licensing which did not accomplish it's purposes well. It
 > was certainly not an effort to tear the GPL down. That would

        Would network computing publish a short article that 
outline the good points ? That would help people understand that
the situation is not that bad.

 > accomplish nothing as I believe the open source community has the
 > strength and the perserverance to accomplish their goal in bringing
 > open source software to the world. The fact that we have a
 > multitude of licenses out there is problematic and hindering the
 > overall effort.

        The diversity of proprietary licenses is enormous. Each
proprietary software vendor has its own license. I find surprising
that this is not highlighted. In fact, the de facto consensus on the
GNU GPL (adoption of a license by many groups not linked together in
any way) is unique. No other software license (proprietary or Free
Software) received such a wide acceptance. The fact that it mostly
relies on copyright law instead of contract law, is compliant to the
Berne convention, has been studied by lawyers in many countries
probably counts for something ;-)

        Thanks for your time,

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