From: Gregory Brown Date: 2006-04-06T00:15:18+09:00 Subject: Re: GPL v3 and Ruby License. On 4/5/06, Austin Ziegler wrote: > On 4/4/06, Gregory Brown wrote: > > I went to MIT for the Free Software Foundation Associate members > > meeting last weekend. I asked Stallman the question of whether the > > FSF planned to contact various individuals who were using dual > > licenses and encourage them to participate in commenting on GPLv3. > > > He sort of yelled at me a lot. Big surprise. You might be able to > > find the recordings of this online sometime soon. > > You might be surprised, but I'm not. Stallman is the FSF's worst enemy > at this point. That was sarcasm. Though, I don't necessarily agree he is the FSF worst enemy, i did lobby heavily for more 'practical' community outreach at this past meeting. Stallman has a function to serve as a cultural icon, and much less as a pragmatic leader. I am not sure if you have met him or been to any FSF meetings, but that is really apparent in person. > > Should the ruby community get active in commenting on GPLv3 in hopes > > of making it possible to switch the ruby license to use it (alongside > > the current, more permissive terms of course), or should we be > > focusing on making a Ruby license that stands on it's own, or should > > we just jump this hurdle down the line when we get to it? > > My personal recommendation would be to change Ruby such that it is > locked to the GNU GPL v2. I personally will be moving to change those > pieces of software that I have written and released under the GNU GPL so > that they are locked to v2. I was thinking about and getting paranoid about the "or any later version" clause you see in most GPLed softwares terms. This was proposed as a 'fix' by the FSF, but I see it as a back door. > I see no benefit in participating in the GPL > v3 system because Stallman isn't really interested in working with > community; he has already made his decisions and the only question is > how to word it so that it is made legal pretty much everywhere. Yes, I complained that it seems like a lot happens behind closed doors at the FSF and then they pop out with their decision and ask for critique after the fact. After my discussion with Peter Brown, he mentioned that they certainly had room to make some changes in the process for the second draft, whether they do or not is yet to be seen. Still, I think if a few of us knock at their door and let them know what we're thinking, they might consider it a bit more seriously. > I do not like most of what I have seen of the v3 draft and see it as one > of the worst possible directions that could be taken. What are your specific gripes? I was honestly ambivalent to slightly annoyed about the DRM clauses until I heard the rationale at their meeting, and I was strongly convinced that the new DRM protection is A Good Thing. Also, they are working on ensuring compatibility with the Apache license, which sounds good too. The patent threat is supposedly going to be softened too. So what bad parts am I missing? > I would *personally* prefer to see Ruby relicensed under something like > the MIT licence because I don't think that there's any merit to the > disjunctive licence support for the GNU GPL. That's a broad stroke. Some people would like to retain copyleft. Placing it under the MIT license would prevent that. Which of course, some would call a good thing, but it would make people like me sad. Still, I do think that Ruby might benefit from a single license, maybe with a weak copyleft such as that of the LGPL (something in that spirit)