It's not about meeting the trend, it's about fulfilling developers'
needs. It's not some kind of fad. In a world where more or more free
software projects are libraries rather than end user programs, many FS
developers don't want to burden their project with a strong copyleft
license.
Of course, perhaps it's too late and people are accustomed enough to
non-copyleft licenses that they don't feel a need to go back. But I'm
sure I'm not the only one to have evolved from a pro-copyleft position
to a "pragmatic" pro-BSD/MIT stance. Because there is no reliable
middle-ground.
> And obviously, considering the inherent "and later" language in
> copyleft-next and the explicit GPLv3 compatibility, this license itself
> has to remain nice and strong in its copyleftness, eh?
Well, I'm not sure what is obvious there. GPLv3 compatibility goes in a
single direction (from copyleft-next to GPLv3). A weak copyleft license
doesn't make that any less possible.
Well, I don't want to rehash them too much here. You could take a look here:
https://lists.fedorahosted.org/pipermail/copyleft-next/2013-May/000674.html
> I have come up with one approach. If you are writing a Python library > foo and you put it under copyleft-next, and you want me to use your > library, you ought to have the burden of making clear that the moment > I merely distribute a file that says 'import foo' my file is ipso > facto "really copyleft-next". If you did not bother to do this, I > ought to be free to rely on an assumption you intended something > 'weaker'.
> Do note that "using a library" in the Python world can go very far, > perhaps as far as monkeypatching the library in order to fix some > undesired behaviour. The license (or its attached FAQ) has to be clear > that such uses don't entail propagation of copyleft to the application > as a whole.
This presents two very different approaches to Python code under copyleft-next. Curious to hear what the current theory and best-practice would be considered to be, with everyone having a few years now to mull that over. Perhaps some clarification on this would obviate or otherwise change the discussion, eh? (In fact, the company I work for recently decided to adopt the usage of Python within our commercial software product, so I'm also quite interested from the perspective of my own job.)
This might then address or change your unanswered question at https://lists.fedorahosted.org/pipermail/copyleft-next/2013-June/000726.html, Antoine.
FWIW at some point I retreated from calling copyleft-next a "strong"
copyleft license to a "non-weak" one (because of the direction certain
structural aspects of it were going in), though I will probably be
reassessing that. I.e. I saw it as potentially occupying some ground
between GPL and whatever a true weak copyleft is. I need to go back
for a reminder of Antoine's specific arguments.