Picking a license

[Patrick Maupin]

On May 8, 8:41 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt... at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Patrick Maupin <pmau... at gmail.com> writes:
> > On May 8, 2:38 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
> > cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> > > Which brings us back full circle to Ben's position, which you took
> > > exception to.
>
> […]
>
> > To me, the clear implication of the blanket statement that you have to
> > use the GPL if you care at all about users is that anybody who doesn't
> > use the GPL is uncaring.  I think that's a silly attitude […]
>
> Fortunately, neither that silly blanket statement nor its implication
> are represented in any of my messages in this thread.

Hmm, I must have misunderstood this:

"Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users that
you'd allow proprietary derivatives of your work to remove the
freedoms you've taken care to grant, then you should choose a copyleft
license like the GPL."

To me, placing "such a low value on the freedom of [my] users" sounds
like I'm ready to consign them to slavery or something, so I certainly
originally viewed this as a "blanket" (e.g. unqualified)
"statement" (well, that should be obvious) that I have to use the GPL
"if [I] care at all about [my] users".

> I hope that helps.

Well, perhaps you meant less by your wording of "a low value on the
freedom" than could be read into it, just as Aahz and I meant less by
"forced" than you apparently read into that.  I think we all have more
or less accurate understandings of the differences between GPL and
permissive licenses, but only disagree somewhat on how important the
various features are, and at the end of the day we all come to some
reasonably nuanced view of how to proceed with our projects.

One thing I realized that I didn't cover in my earlier posts is that I
think that for a lot of library-type projects, LGPL v2.1 is a really
fine license, offering a great balance of competing interests.  I view
the new licensing on QT from Nokia (commercial, GPL v3, or LGPL v2.1)
as a good example of a balanced strategy.

Regards,
Pat