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| Re: GNU License text version [message #42640 is a reply to message #42578] |
Wed, 15 November 2006 16:18   |
 Randy D. Smith
Messages: 394
Registered: July 2009 |
Senior Member |
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Alex Blewitt wrote:
> Yes, that's why I was <a href="http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/t84348.html">wondering if Sun's GPL</a> is such a good thing earlier.
>
> I knew that Antlr was GPL, and wasn't sure if it was the only example. Plus, I'm not authoritative enough to say so for sure :-)
>
> Mind you, I wonder if Sun picked the GPL (and for NetBeans some way down the line) specifically because GPL and EPL are incompatible, whereas if they'd have used the AL instead, it would have been (since Eclipse redistributes e.g. <a href=" http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/org.apache.ant/lib/">Ant</a> and others from ASF).
>
> Alex.
I think Sun's thinking went a lot deeper than that. Yes, I expect is was
a part of the consideration ... one of my colleagues speculated that the
decision was one of whom to befriend and whom to anger ... and
IBM&Eclipse are definitely not on Sun's friends list.
ASL, as an academic license, would have given others (specifically
competitors) too many ways to take Sun's work and use it as their own,
whereas the GPL's reciprocal clauses force consumers changes out into
the open.
Their walking a tightrope, and (IMHO) doing a pretty good job given the
criteria they're working with.
Note that one pundit (Berlind?) speculated that this actually favors
Eclipse over Netbeans, and speculated on a move to merge. Again, I think
it's way more complicated than that.
--
RDS
Randy D. Smith randy (dot) d (dot) smith (at) intel (dot) com
Eclipse TPTP Committer, Platform Proj (data collection/agent controller)
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| Re: GNU License text version [message #42671 is a reply to message #42640] |
Wed, 15 November 2006 22:17 |
Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: alex_blewitt.yahoo.com
> > Yes, that's why I was <a href="http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/t84348.html">wondering if Sun's GPL</a> is such a good thing earlier.
> I think Sun's thinking went a lot deeper than that. Yes, I expect is was
> a part of the consideration ... one of my colleagues speculated that the
> decision was one of whom to befriend and whom to anger ... and
> IBM&Eclipse are definitely not on Sun's friends list.
There's certainly never been much love lost between the two. To some extent, competition is good though -- after all, both Eclipse and NetBeans have improved dramatically because of the other's presence.
> ASL, as an academic license, would have given others (specifically
> competitors) too many ways to take Sun's work and use it as their own,
> whereas the GPL's reciprocal clauses force consumers changes out into
> the open.
On a point of pedantry, I believe that they call it the AL rather than the ASL -- it's at the Apache Licenses page (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Note that regardless of license, you still couldn't call it Java. It's also not the only one which requires changes be contributed back. What it does give, above all else, is a reason to include it in Linux systems on the back end, which hasn't really been a major success in the past. Regardless of anything else, I think that it will have a positive impact in the Linux world.
Alex.
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