[copyleft-next] in defense of the TGPPL idea

Theodore Ts'o tytso at mit.edu
Tue Jul 31 03:13:20 UTC 2012


On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 07:18:06PM -0400, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> I've always felt the strongest copyleft license on the planet should
> always be a universal receiver from all the weaker copylefts.  However,
> Ted's points about the anti-strongest-possible copyleft crowd disliking
> this is a serious issue.
> 
> I'd like to point out that the GPL family, pre-v3, always had this.  You
> could drift from LGPLv2 up to GPLv2 or remove GPLv2 exceptions and put the
> code into pure GPLv2 projects.  It's only the release of GPLv3 that led to
> any rancor about this issue.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that assessment.

Several times in the past when the Linux kernel developers have taken
BSD-licensed code and dropped it into the GPL-licensed kernel, there
has been rancor from the BSD development kernel.  Their complaint was
about the same kind of asymmetry; the fact that GPL projects can take
form BSD projects, but not vice versa.  While you could claim that is
an essential "feature" of the BSD licese, nevertheless the asymmetry
can cause people to think that there's something unfair going on.

(Personally, I consider it a *feature* that someone can't take strict
GPLv2-only license code and slap an anti-Tivoization clause on it.)

The rancor comes when you have people who feel strongly about a
particular philosophical issue; whether it's the BSD vs. GPL issue, or
the anti-Tivo clause.  Having been on both sides of the asymmetry, I
have a lot of sympathy for both sides of the argument.

As a result, if someone is starting a new project, or writing new
code, and has very strong feelings about a particular "additional
permission", I can completely understand and sympathize with that
person not wanting the "additional permission" to be stripped out,
and/or a stronger copyleft license applied to their work if that's
something they feel strongly about.

Regards,

					- Ted


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