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by cyphar 3754 days ago
> > Crucially, a user of GPL software is allowed to do whatever they want.

> Except develop the software however they want.

I don't know where you got that idea from. You can develop the software however you like. That's a technical question. The only requirement is that people you distribute your software to must also get the source code.

The GPL's job is to protect user's freedom. The developers don't get any special treatment.
1 comments
git-pull 3753 days ago
> > Except develop the software however they want.

> I don't know where you got that idea from.

Many employers won't allow GPL codebase.

The license isn't backwards compatible. I can't simply pull GPL code into my BSD licensed project. Even a snippet

You can't, say, simply copy and paste a struct out of git or even libgit2.

> You can develop the software however you like.

Heh, its notorious for causing roadblocks in development. Look up the stories on LLVM/Clang, ZFS in Linux.

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cyphar 3752 days ago
>>> Except develop the software however they want. >> I don't know where you got that idea from. > Many employers won't allow GPL codebase.

Explain it to your employer better then. Or find a better employer. Not to mention they are almost certainly using GPL code /somewhere/.

> The license isn't backwards compatible.

GPLvX or later makes them pseudo-compatible (you can release a combination under a newer license). That works fine for most people.

> I can't simply pull GPL code into my BSD licensed project. Even a snippet. You can't, say, simply copy and paste a struct out of git or even libgit2.

1) Yes you can, it'll just become GPL licensed as a whole. 2) I don't think anyone would consider copying a structure as being a "significant portion" of the code. In fact, in C, structures aren't code at all, they're an API (the `struct` keyword generates no code). And I think we all agree as a community that APIs are not copyrightable (or else Linux and GNU would be the largest copyright violations on the planet).

>> You can develop the software however you like. > Heh, its notorious for causing roadblocks in development. Look up the stories on LLVM/Clang, ZFS in Linux.

ZFS on Linux / Dtrace are FUD. Given that Oracle already distributes DTrace with their Linux distribution, it's clearly dual-GPL licensed DTrace to their customers. If you agree that ZFS being included with Linux would be a GPL violation (I don't, because the spirit of the GPL is applied, and the binary itself is not a violation because CDDL allows sublicensing of the resulting binary), then distributing it as source that is compiled on the users' machine (DKMS) is fine. Not to mention that Oracle will not have standing to sue (their license has not been violated in the case of distributing CDDL code with the GPL -- the only people you can argue have their copyright violated are the the Linux kernel guys and I don't see why they would sue people for the dubious license under which the source code is distributed -- nobody seriously believes their whole work will be under the CDDL, only code that was ported directly from illumos's ZFS).

The LLVM/Clang thing was caused by technical decisions in GCC, where they believed that making something like LLVM's IR would allow people to make proprietary compilers based on their technology (which is a valid grievance if you care about preserving software freedom). The point is that it was a technical decision.

The only requirement you have if you use the GPL is to accompany your binaries with the source (or the other two provisions in the license which aren't as well-used as others).

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