[nirui]

I somehow want to quote this too:

> Direct GitHub to promote correct and clear use of licenses and the best use of copyleft (GPL version 3-or-later).

I remember when I was very green, that list of licenses on the GitHub repository creation page is very very confusing to me. I don't know which is which and which one I should use, and most importantly, what's the effect of my choice.

It could be great if GitHub can improve that list a bit to help people to make wiser choice before a repository is created.

[Smithalicious]

I take issue with the "promote ... the best use of copyleft (GPL version 3-or-later)" here. The GPL is a controversial license by itself, though it's the de facto copyleft license and reasonable to promote it, but the GPLv3-vs-GPLv2 debate is alive and well and I don't want GitHub to "promote" either of them as "the best".

[simion314]

Were you ever affected by the GPL3 vs GPL2 license? I am just wondering who is affected(not everybody makes kernels and drivers)

[mikepurvis]

Any MacOS user who has to put up with having bash-from-2006 as the default shell has been affected by GPL2 vs GPL3.

[zeveb]

Correction: any MacOS user is affected by Apple's decision not to update bash.

[EpicEng]

...due to changes in v3 which Apple sees as incompatible with their business model. That is an effect of v3. By your logic v3 never affects anyone because there's always a human decision behind whether or not to adopt it or to integrate software which does.

[bbq123r]

Yes my large tech company has a blanket ban on us using GPLv3 (it's possible to get some exceptions but a pain in the arse), but no problem with GPLv2

[CJefferson]

Readline is distributed only under GPLv3 nowadays. I worked on some software licensed only under GPLv2, where some authors are no longer available. GPLv2 and GPLv3 aren't compatible.

[simion314]

Thanks for you response but I am not understanding, you wanted to copy paste some code from a GPL2 project into a GPL3 one ?

[hollerith]

He probably wanted to link the Readline library into his GPL2 program, which according to the owner of the library (the FSF) is not permitted and might have led to his employer's getting sued by the FSF for copyright infringement or at least to his employer's lawyers getting scared, then badmouthing him to management.

[de_watcher]

TL;DR on GPLv3-vs-GPLv2: the v3 adds a protection against hardware lock-ins. It doesn't come up in 95% of the cases. But the license is different, so a debate can be started.

[steveklabnik]

GitHub did make https://choosealicense.com , which is intended to help like this.

[quadrangle]

RMS knows that, and his suggestion was to have GitHub stop encouraging consideration of GPLv2 and instead promote GPLv3.

[nirui]

Yes, they have also put the link besides that license list.

However, my opinion is, the list better be designed in such way that users don't need to access to another website to understand what they're about to do.

It shouldn't be very hard, some sort of license description would do the work, I think.