While the underlying reasons are lame and undesirable from an OSS perspective, I'm having a hard time finding fault here. It's like the old joke about Doctor's advice that says, if it hurts when they do something, they should probably stop doing it. In this case, if using GPLed code is getting them sued, one possible solution is to comply with the license, the other solution is to simply stop using GPLed code. Both are equally valid choices, even if one is less desirable from an OSS advocacy perspective.
The onus is on the OSS community to clearly articulate the value provided by compliance that exceeds the value achieved by going back to a mix of proprietary and BSD licensed code.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Date: 2012-01-31 12:26 am (UTC)While the underlying reasons are lame and undesirable from an OSS perspective, I'm having a hard time finding fault here. It's like the old joke about Doctor's advice that says, if it hurts when they do something, they should probably stop doing it. In this case, if using GPLed code is getting them sued, one possible solution is to comply with the license, the other solution is to simply stop using GPLed code. Both are equally valid choices, even if one is less desirable from an OSS advocacy perspective.
The onus is on the OSS community to clearly articulate the value provided by compliance that exceeds the value achieved by going back to a mix of proprietary and BSD licensed code.