Picking a license

[Carl Banks]

On May 8, 9:29 pm, Paul Rubin <no.em... at nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Carl Banks <pavlovevide... at gmail.com> writes:
> > If a commercial developer has a EULA that prevents users from
> > combining their tools with tools from (say) their competitors,
>
> Do you mean something like a EULA that stops you from buying a copy of
> Oracle and combining it with tools from IBM on the computer that you
> install Oracle on?

Yes

>  Those EULAs exist but are not remotely comparable to
> the GPL.

They're not exactly the same but they're quite comparable and both
disrespectful to the user.

> > The GPL does exactly that,
>
> No it doesn't (not like the above).  You, the licensee under the GPL,
> can make those combinations and use them as much as you want on your own
> computers.  You just can't distribute the resulting derivative to other
> people.  With proprietary software you can't redistribute the software
> to other people from day zero (or even use more copies within your own
> company than you've paid for), regardless of whether you've combined it
> with anything.  And since you usually don't get the source code, it's
> awfully hard to make derived combinatoins.

Really, commercial closed source programs don't have APIs?

If the EULA isn't disrespectful likle the GPL, then I could write a
program that links against multiple closed source API and distribute
closed or open source binaries.  Can't do either if you change one of
the proprietary programs to GPL.  GPL is a lot more restrictive than
mere closed source proprietary when it comes to stuff like that.


Carl Banks