Thursday, April 7, 2011

It is time for a new type of GPL license?

When GPL was created most of the programs were classic/desktop applications.

Once you got the application and the GPL license stick to it you were not able to make money out of it without making source public. Once sources made public other people would be able to create a new "build" out of them....so all "money makers" were killed :)

In these days if you have a web application and make it GPL then someone could take it, not changing a single bit of it and make a service out of it - thus making money and not contributing to the sources.

So I think a lot of so called "web" integrators a laughing at GPL application authors.

It is time for a new type of GPL license?

2 comments:

  1. Look into AGPL. It is designed to cover exactly this scenario.

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  2. That is nice as Monty (the creator of MySQL) told me that 2 days ago at OSCON 2011 conference.

    This means that there is a real need for this kind of license.

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