On 09/01/2012 08:53 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
A GitHub person recently reported the following issue:
- begin -
IMHO one of the worst problems of the GPL is that it don't allows
linking (static or dynamic) programs licensed under the GPL with some
of the FSF/OSI approved licenses (OpenSSL,CDDL,PHP License...)
I think it will be a good idea to add an exception to this license
that allows linking the software with ANY of the licenses considered
as free software license by the FSF/OSI while at the same time forbids
to link the software with any proprietary license.
Perhaps something like:
In addition, as a special exception, the copyright holders give
permission to link the code of portions of this program with any
software licensed under a license that satisfies either the Free
Software Definition, version 1.111, as published by the Free Software
Foundation ("FSF") or the Open Source Definition, as published by
the Open Source Initiative, and distribute linked combinations
including the two.
- end -
I'm not convinced this is a good idea overall (though I understand the
general appeal). It's not the first such suggestion; I remember that
someone outside of the FSF who had access to an early draft of GPLv3
suggested something similar. It is reminiscent of things like the
MySQL "FLOSS License Exception".
As to the details, I would limit it to the FSF's Free Software
Definition.
This proposal might make the most sense for licenses that are
generally considered non-copyleft but GPL-incompatible (the proposed
language seems modeled on things like the [I believe FSF-recommended]
OpenSSL GPL linking exception). For copyleft licenses, it raises the
same problem on a more general level that we dealt with when thinking
about a clause that would achieve EPL compatibility.
- RF