On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 12:24 PM, Ted Smith <tedks@riseup.net> wrote:
On Wed, 2015-01-07 at 11:33 +0000, Cathal Garvey wrote:
The GPL acknowledges this by forbidding suits within the scope of the work (I think: GPL experts on-list?), preventing E3 from occurring. Other licenses often take steps in this direction, but the ultra-short "friendly and permissive" licenses usually don't
Probably because their model and vision is different, they're not really out to modify the world beyond saying "here you go, it's free", only out to modify the code, so they've little interest in legal longtexts or lawyers.
terse and legally unenforceable way that they might as well not be.
The GPLv3+ contains this sort of patent protection
Section 10, last paragraph, last part. Don't know if that has been tested in court as other parts have been in the news. And all of paragraph 11, which grants patents. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Freedom is not merely defined in law but in experience, and simply removing explicit limitations on freedom (copyleft licenses) does not mean that the total freedom in the world has increased.
BSD advocates, I think, are not interested in total freedom in the world. This is a CONSEQUENCE or OUTCOME of a choice, not the choice itself.
boils down to consequentialist morals on the GPL side, and deontological or rule-based morals on the BSD side.
Yes, depends on definition of freedom. Unfortunately GPL and BSD people seem define that differently.