Re: [Duplicity-talk] GPL-3

[Martin Pool]

Wearing my own personal hat, I am not a big fan of the GPLv3.  Having
different licensing rules depending on whether the program

Martin




On 14 April 2011 16:32, Marius Vollmer <address@hidden> wrote:
> ext Joe MacDonald <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> There's actually a number of reasons but they all amount to something like 
>> "we
>> are writing proprietary code and don't want to be forced to open-source any 
>> of
>> it".
>
> In my experience, that is not the concern with GPLv3.  GPLv2 and GPLv3
> are quite the same in this regard, and if you have made your peace with
> GPLv2 by following its conditions, then GPLv3 wont make your life any
> harder.
>
> What _is_ a concern, as far as I can see, are the 'anti-tivoization'
> clauses of the GPLv3: You can not have any kind of signing or
> checksumming in a product that prevents a modified version of GPLv3
> software to actually run.

.. except you can, if it is a commercial rather than a consumer product:

  >>> GPLv3 tolerates tivoization only for products that are almost
exclusively meant for businesses and organizations.
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html>

This distinction between consumer and personal use irks me, because it
harks back to the field-of-endeavour restrictions that were rife in
shareware and which GPLv2 and reformed BSD licences largely saved us;
partly because it seems very arbitrary; and partly because it seems to
have been arrived at through back-room negotiations with little clear
justification. (That last bit sounds almost too paranoid, but I have
never found a good statement why it was written this way.)  Businesses
have at least as much reason to want to be able to change software
they receive as private persons.

Martin