On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 07:48:16PM -0500, Pamela Chestek wrote:
I misspoke a bit - the perception is about what the penalty is if
there has been an inadvertent "infection," not that the license itself
causes the infection per se. But from my experience in the proprietary
world (which was Progress Software, which may be part of the reason
too), it's the accidental infection they're worried about, not the
deliberate creation of a derivative work. And the reason it is
accidental is because it's so bloody unclear when you've created a
derivative work.
Sure, that's consistent with some of the GPL-phobia I've encountered
in some companies.
So I guess what this means is, if you want to avoid the
"infection"
concern, but want strong copyleft, then you need to be very crisp and
perhaps less expansive about what a "Derived Work" is.
That seems related to some of the comments Ted Ts'o has sometimes made
on this list.
I have to admit I've thought about this -- not so much the 'less
expansive' part but the 'very crisp' part. I don't know how to do that
(yet), beyond what's already been done. Or without adding a *very*
long paragraph.
But then we're
back to trying to appease an audience that probably isn't going to
adopt copyleft in the first place anyway.
Yes, especially today, where 'adopt' means 'for our new stuff that we
might open source'. Though even by early 2008 this should have been
clear, peculiar institution dual-licensors aside. If copyleft-next is
used at all (by someone other than the great Kuno Woudt [may he be
praised!]) it won't be corporations that lead the way. Nor indeed
would I want that to be so.
- RF