[sldev] GPLed submissions

[John Hurliman]

Dzonatas wrote:
>
> John Hurliman wrote:
>> Dzonatas wrote:
>>> "Rob Linden [20/Feb/07 09:49 PM] Thanks for the submission Alynna. 
>>> Unfortunately, we can't accept the patch as submitted, as it 
>>> requires us to incorporate GPL licensed code, which we can't 
>>> currently do, as we currently have components that aren't GPL 
>>> compatible."
>>>
>>> This is an expected response to the current model. LL has already 
>>> expressed the desire to keep the server code closed source and 
>>> eventually license it out (non-GPL). 
>>
>> LL licenses the client under several different agreements to 
>> different people. The binary you download off the secondlife.com 
>> website is not GPL software; it's usually built from a slightly 
>> different codebase than the GPL release and LL does not make that 
>> exact copy of the source available at all, let alone for three years 
>> in to the future. They also have a commercial licensing option where 
>> you can get a proprietary licensed version of the viewer and plug in 
>> all your proprietary code and release a viewer without source in 
>> exchange for money. They couldn't do any of this if there was a GPL 
>> infection in the viewer code.
> The GPL inoculate is very effective when used properly. It appears it 
> has offended you by the use of the word "infection."

I don't know what taking offense has to do with anything, it's a term to 
describe the effects of GPL licensing. See Greg Vetter's paper 
"Infectious' Open Source Software: Spreading Incentives or Promoting 
Resistance" (http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/vetter2.pdf) and a short 
editorial summary of the paper at 
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2005/11/infectious_lice.html

What is the point of this thread even? I'm honestly curious whether 
someone is trying to integrate code in to the viewer, or the viewer in 
to something else, or do something and they can't do it because of 
licensing restrictions, or if this is just a philosophical dickwaving 
over licensing choices? If someone posts a concrete problem and says "I 
have this code here and I want to do this with it but I don't think I 
can because of this" I'm sure a lot of people can chime in with 
solutions, but looking back through the thread all I could find were 
people explaining to each other how licensing/copyright/patent law is 
supposed to work.

John Hurliman