Why Plan-9 licensing?

[Karsten M. Self]

on Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 02:20:34AM -0500, Jim Choate (ravage at einstein.ssz.com) wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> 
> > Nutshell argument:  license interactions are factorial.
> 
> How so? Proof?

Sorry.  Combinatorial.  Not quite as extreme.  From a legal standpoint,
interactions of all combinations of licenses must be considered.  The
interesting cases usually reduce to a much smaller number.  

The trend in free software licensing has been strong reluctance to
accepting novel licenses.  A strong case for benefit is generally
requested, many licenses boil down to ego, corporate politics, or
failure to understand free software / open source concepts -- the
licenses simply aren't either, again, Plan 9 is a case in point.

There's also been a tendency among major projects to seek compatibility
(usually through dual or multiple licensing) with the GPL, Sun and
Mozilla being two cases in point.

> > Interaction complexity reduces overall value of a codebase, and
> > tends to marginalize minority licenses.
> 
> Interaction for who, the author or the user? 

Interaction between licenses.  It's more overhead for the developer to
deal with. 

Case in point:  Tom's Root/Boot.  GNU/Linux on a floppy, 1.77 MB.
Licenses themselves comprised some 50KB, significant for this task.
Terms for compliance that require license and binary to occupy the same
media in use are not acceptable for the technical task (fortunately none
of the major free software licenses require this).  OpenBSD has
eliminated several packages from Donald J. Bernstein due to his
licensing clauses, despite their being technically excellent (if non
standards compliant) software.  Any number of proposals cross the OSI's
door which exclude specific types of use or transfer.

It's too much overhead for developers to consider most of these, they'll
stick to a half-dozen or so known (or highly similar) licenses.  Again,
GPL, LGPL, BSD/MIT, and Mozilla cover a broad range of strategic
interests.

> All license start out in the minority. It's a competition in a way.

What are you competing for?  What characteristics of a license will
"win" the competition?  This isn't software domination, it's more a
protocol for collaborative development.  Once you've got that nailed
down, stop dicking with the damned lawyers, and start writing code.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>       http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
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