Glenn Maynard wrote: > Lots of people become disappointed in the GPL once they personally become > the one wasting time reimplementing stuff due to incompatibilities that > the GPL deliberately causes. I no longer use the GPL for my own work, > preferring the MIT license--do what you want, don't waste your time reinventing > the wheel. I think the issue of non-GPL-compatible licenses is certainly annoying, but I don't really see any way around it without losing the copyleft. In order for copyleft to work, there needs to be _some_ definition of what Free means in the "derived works must be Free" clause. "Compatible with this license" is the easiest. I suppose one could have a "As an exception, you may combine this with anything that meets the <insert DFSG, OSI, FSF, etc> requirements" clause, or something like MySQL's FLOSS exception, but that still prevents you from combining it with another copyleft license, and I believe it opens up rather large holes in the copyleft. Overall, I think the benefit of the GPL's copyleft is worth the hassle dealing with the occasional piece of non-GPL-compatible software. See also http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html ; I'm more inclined to blame these (relatively uncommon) incompatibilities on those who make their software GPL-incompatible, rather than on the GPL itself. - Josh Triplett
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