[copyleft-next] Platonic ideals, restrictiveness and weaker copyleft

Richard Fontana fontana at sharpeleven.org
Wed Aug 1 12:19:53 UTC 2012


On 07/31/2012 11:25 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 10:40:41PM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
>> It is intended to be strong copyleft. This is a fixed goal.
> 
> Just to clarify, when you say strong copyleft, you mean in the GPL vs
> LGPL sense, right?

Yes. That's the only sense I mean.

> People have been using "stronger" and "weaker" in other senses (i.e.,
> whether there are more restrictions, such as the anti-Tivo clause) ---
> i.e., GPLv3 is "stronger" than GPLv2, or GPLv2 is "stronger" than BSD.

Right. I myself have only become aware of this usage recently (in the
past month), and it surprises me. I don't think this is what the FSF,
or RMS, ever meant by "strong" vs. "weak". For example, I don't recall
the FSF ever saying that GPLv3 is "stronger" than GPLv2, or that
AGPLv3 is "stronger" than GPLv3.

 - Richard






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