Picking a license

[Paul Boddie]

On 14 Mai, 20:36, Patrick Maupin <pmau... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That statement was made in the context of why Carl doesn't use GPL-
> licensed *libraries*.  He and I have both explained the difference
> between libraries and programs multiple times, not that you care.

Saying that GPL-licensed applications are acceptable is a minor
concession to the use of copyleft licensing if one advocates
permissive licensing for all things which are not perceived to be
finished products: things that one isn't looking to re-use somehow.
Saying that one likes Octave and that it uses the GPL, too, is really
damning it with faint praise if one were then to say that its parts
should be permissively licensed so that one can incorporate its
functionality into something else. No, I don't care if you have a
problem with GPL-licensed libraries because it is, as we have
established repeatedly, your problem not mine.

[...]

> > The production of a
> > different "proprietary flavour" of MatLab wouldn't be beneficial to
> > them at all - it might even be detrimental to their project - and
> > might only be marginally beneficial, at best, to existing MatLab
> > customers.
>
> I personally can't see any realistic chance of detriment.  How could a
> proprietary clone hope to compete against free software on one side
> and real matlab on the other side?  That's a no-win position, so I
> wouldn't expect to see any proprietary clones.

Well, only permissively licensed software would encourage such clones.
At that point, there are incentives for people to develop
functionality for proprietary deployment instead of for the upstream
project.

[PySide and proprietary software]

> No, PySide is about non-GPL software, and is released under a license
> that even RMS recognizes as "free", and it is certainly not of
> marginal utility.

No, PySide is about permitting the development of proprietary
applications by providing a solution to the all-important "ISVs" which
lets them develop and deploy proprietary software. Do you really think
a platform vendor whose "ISVs" routinely ship proprietary software on
their platform and on other platforms, and who will demand the ability
to continue to do so, now expects all these "ISVs" to provide their
applications under the modified BSD licence? Sure, other developers
can use the software - even people releasing GPL-licensed software -
but that is highly unlikely to be the primary business motivation. If
you think the mobile telephony vendors are a bunch of fluffy bunny
rabbits playing with each other in sugary meadows of niceness, I don't
want to be present when someone directly and finally disabuses you of
this belief. It's all about people selling stuff to "consumers" over
and over again, preferably with the "consumers" rarely if ever being
able to opt-out and do things their own way.

> > (And PyQt is not "marginally useful" - it is a widely-used and widely
> > well-regarded library.)
>
> Well, we agree on that.  But I don't know why you're trying to claim I
> said PyQt was only marginally useful.

Because you followed on from writing about PyQt by introducing the
topic of "marginally useful" libraries, thus giving the impression
that you regarded PyQt as "marginally useful".

Paul