As to the present topic, the NewsForge/Slashdot headlines about a
congressman wanting to "outlaw the GPL" are misleading and inflammatory
-- dishonest journalism at its worst. As far as I can tell, this has
nothing to do with outlawing the GPL. The issue is deciding on a license
to recommend or mandate for use with software that is developed under
government funding. That's a legitimate issue. Software developed by the
government, or under government contract, ideally should be considered
to be in the public domain; the government, representing the people,
paid for its development, so one could reasonably argue that it should
be freely reusable by any American citizen for any purpose, including
incorporating it into proprietary products, developing proprietary
extensions, etc. On the other hand, one could argue that the GPL is the
best way of ensuring that this publicly-funded software is used to the
maximal benefit of the people as a whole. Which side of the debate one
takes is likely to be predictable from one's general view of the free
software movement, but neither position seems inherently right or wrong
to me.
My view is that the GPL is a bit too strong for publicly-funded code,
but BSD/X is a bit too weak, since, as I understand them, they do not
discourage Microsoft's "embrace and extend" strategy. Something closer
to the LGPL might do the job nicely. You should be able to use
publicly-funded code in closed-source products, but alterations to the
publicly-funded code should be required to be released under the same
license as the original code. This would allow everyone to use the code
for any purpose, but prevent "embrace and extend" takeovers.
Craig