ESR: "We Don't Need the GPL Anymore"

[Rick Moen]

Quoting David N. Welton (davidw@dedasys.com):

> I don't think the GPL is no longer necessary.  

Good point.  When people ask me "What licence should I use for [project foo]?",
the only reasonable and sensible answer I can think of is
"It depends entirely on what licence effects you're trying to achieve."

I suspect Eric spoke in something of a flamebaiting fashion to achieve
some sort of street theatre effect (I'm guessing, obviously), but doubt
he'd claim GPL or other copyleft licensing is inappropriate for someone
who has a specific reason for wanting copyleft mechanisms.

In any event, hardly anyone bothered to fairly consider Eric's point,
e.g., "As far back as 1998, I suspected that allegiance to the GPL is
actually evidence that open source developers don't really believe their
own story. That is, if we really believe that open source is a superior
system of production, and therefore that it will drive out closed source
in a free market, then why do we think we _need_ infectious licensing?" 


Of course, that question does beg the question of whether one
necessarily stipulates belief "that open source is a superior system of
production, and therefore that it will drive out closed source in a free
market" -- which assumption could be discussed -- but the critics in
this case aren't seeking rational discussion.

Nor do critics bother to notice numerous excellent points Eric made
further down, e.g., regarding BitKeeper:  "Tridge did this because what
he needed was a tool to extract BitKeeper metadata from the kernel
archive -- data which had been put in BitKeeper but which McVoy did not
own. Writing a new protocol would have been beside the point -- what he
wanted was to get the metadata out of jail."