[copyleft-next] has anyone done a proof of concept permissive.next based?

Luis R. Rodriguez mcgrof at do-not-panic.com
Wed Sep 26 17:39:36 UTC 2012


On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Luis Villa <luis at tieguy.org> wrote:
>> On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Richard Fontana
>> <fontana at sharpeleven.org> wrote:
>>> On 09/22/2012 03:34 PM, Luis Villa wrote:
>>>> Just curious if anyone has thought about, looked at, or drafted a
>>>> permissive license based on the structure, organization, and
>>>> terminology of copyleft.next.
>>>
>>> In fact I have thought about it (but didn't go beyond the 'thought'
>>> stage), not too after I had already started the project. Once a
>>> certain level of simplification of structure was achieved I realized
>>> it wouldn't be difficult to achieve this. Whether it is worth doing is
>>> an interesting idea to ponder.
>>
>> If nothing else, it would be an interesting drafting exercise and
>> might point out structural issues.
>
> I'd love to see it. As I've carped elsewhere, the state of the art of
> permissive licenses is pretty poor.

Because they suck for freedoms anyway. Who would care and most
importantly *why*? I think we stand more to gain to focus on
addressing FUD and stupidity over Free Software licenses rather than
promoting archaic practices. In a way I think copyleft-next helps with
this exact issue.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying permissive licenses do not have
their place today, quite the contrary, I've been promoting localizing
the GPL [0] and using permissive licenses specifically even in the
Linux kernel to help fight killing off proprietary drivers, but in the
long run permissive licenses are old and decrepit. The importance of
the GPL [1] is the freedoms they bring and guarantee to us as both a
community and ecosystem, permissive licenses today are there simply a
compromise to deal with current political and legal stupidity by part
of certain OS vendors / projects and lastly archaic economic models.
Sure permissive licenses can still be advanced and brought up to date,
but for what purpose ?

[0] http://mcgrof.blogspot.com/2012/04/localizing-gpl.html
[1] http://mcgrof.blogspot.com/2012/03/importance-of-gpl.html

  Luis


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