As for developers, I don’t see the deal affecting them that much; (someone clarify this) but as I understand it, a developer would be giving more value to consumers of Novell than those of other Linux entities if they contribute to multiple distros. If anything, the deal gives developers more options by which to release their work.

If you’re a developer and write a program, and the only people who can legally use it are those who buy through Novell, that puts you in a pretty weak negotiating position with Novell. If a customer can use your program with a support contract from Red Hat, Novell, Oracle, or Canonical, then not only does the customer have more negotiating power when buying services, you as the developer have more negotiating power when selling your services. From a developer’s point of view, it’s rational to use the GPL to enforce a policy of “multiple companies can sell support for my work, or no one can”.

There is one BSD-like license with a patent clause — Larry Rosen’s Academic Free License. You might want to consider that instead of the original BSD license as long as software patents are in force.

The GPL is a very inflexible license. FOSS supporters talk about interoperability, and the need for more legal certainty in FOSS development, but they fall at their own swords when it comes to any practical solution.

If you’re out of the big tent, don’t complain that you choose to be left in the rain.

I have no idea how you got that from what I wrote. I believe that the GPL means what it says:

“If a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.”

I think that’s pretty clear. GPL-using companies can work with “IP firms,” they just can’t sign licensing agreements that privilege themselves (or their customers) over third parties with respect to patents.

I should amend that to be “you would not necessarily use the GPL”.

In some cases people use the GPL without consideration of ethics, e.g. simply because they find its assurance of source code visibility facilitates open and collaborative development.

I should amend that to be “you would not necessarily use the GPL”.

In some cases people use the GPL without consideration of ethics, e.g. simply because they find its assurance of source code visibility facilitates open and collaborative development.

You are granted an unethical privilege to a monopoly, to a suspension of the public’s liberty. Either you can unethically exploit this suspension, or you can ethically nullify it with the GPL.

Don’t forget you are also included as a member of the public you can liberate.

If you publish using the BSD you will not necessarily be free to build upon other people’s published derivatives of your code.

With the GPL you have restored your own liberty (granted to yourself as a member of the public, by yourself as the copyright holder).

If you do not share the view of the FSF that the public has a right to liberty, a right to build upon public works, then certainly you would not use the GPL.

There may be encouragement to adopt a more ethical approach to publishing, but this is not force, it is persuasion through argument and the demonstration of the viability and success of an emancipated public.

That said, your privilege to suspend the public’s liberty may not last forever – and its effectiveness may already be insignificant.

I don’t think you’re describing Galt’s Gulch with the GPL and its community. You’re talking about pouting FOSS companies that left outside the big tent.

Well, there we go again trying to make things narrow, trying to stay within our own little areas of expertise.

That’s one of the things I really like about Tim (except when he disagrees with me on net neutrailty of course) is that his approach is cross -disciplinary. Yes, the GPL is a legal document, but it is much more than that. Think of it as a totem, around which a community has grown.

It has it’s own network, its own plausable premise , and it’s own goals. It understands the limits that exist because of the social economic matrix that it finds itself embedded within. It will quite rightly resist attempts to weaken it, which can only be done by taking away primary liberties and ownership rights, because that is what it is built on.