Re: From Lua to Python?

[Russell Haley <russ.haley@...>]

On Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 3:34 PM, Dibyendu Majumdar
<mobile@majumdar.org.uk> wrote:
> Hi Rusell,
>
> On 4 July 2017 at 23:25, Russell Haley <russ.haley@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm referring more to the IBMs, Oracles and Tata consultancies of the
>> world. I have now seen two companies steam rolled because the original
>> authors used FOSS underpinnings and a larger consultancy rolls in and
>> just takes over the code because, well, it's GPL! I'm sure the
>> situation was more complex that I have acknowledged, but I no longer
>> trust the GPL. I'm really glad people want to share source code. I do
>> too, but I want control over what I share.
>>
>
> I am afraid your understanding of GPL is perhaps incorrect. None of
> the corporations like GPL. In fact the reason they don't like it is is
> that it is a viral license. It requires that any combined work must
> also be licensed as GPL.
>
> The only major company that licensed something as GPL was Sun when
> they released Java as GPL. This was because of the way GPL works which
> meant that Sun could still rely on people wanting a commercial
> license. Similar approach was taken by MySQL - before they were bought
> by Sun.
>
> I don't particularly like GPL because of its viral nature, therefore I
> prefer to use other licenses such as MIT. But these other licenses are
> actually ones that can be exploited more easily as they do not require
> that licensee gives anything back.

Which I am not opposed to. Innovating and close sourcing is not my
issue. Like yourself, I prefer MIT, FreeBSD, Apache 2, etc  because I
want to choose what to give back. It is the viral nature of the GPL
that I have seen exploited by those more legally savvy than the
original authors of the projects.