Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
On Thu, 3 Nov 2005, Thiemo Seufer wrote:Why do programs written specifically for Debian such as dpkg or apt, have a license which is not compatible with some other DFSG-compliant licenses?Because the authors chose so.Obviously. But the question was why they chose to do so when it goes against the spirit of the DFSG?
They can't have deliberately chosen the GPL to be incompatible with a DFSG-(non?)compliant CDDL for two reasons:
a) CDDL's DFSG-compliance has been repeated subject of debate and it didn't receive a roundabout positive review yet, afaik.
b) the license choice of the authors of said utilities (GPL) most likely predates CDDL, so one can't assume that they deliberately chose to be incompatible with something that didn't exist at that point in time. CDDL only officially exists since a few seasons.
For better or worse, the CDDL is GPL-incompatible by an explicit choice of its drafters. That's not necessarily something undesirable for its drafters, from a few conversations I had with people involved in that process.
cheers, dalibor topic