[gdal-dev] Licensing Policy for drivers and applications

[Daniel Morissette]

On 11-02-01 09:21 AM, strk wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 07:04:44AM -0600, Patrick Cannon wrote:
>
>> The GPL is a virus license, if you really wanted the code to be "free" it
>> would be released under an MIT style license.  The GPL/LGPL is just another
>> proprietary license scheme that is meant to prevent people from using the
>> code in any commercial venture.  Which is OK if you are a government agency
>> or a school.
>
> I don't get this.
> What prevents you from talking with the copyright holder of a GPL/LGPL
> licenced software the same way you'd talk with the copyright holder of
> a proprietary licensed software ?
>

Unfortunately, due to the collaborative nature of open source software, 
there is not always (and actually very rarely) a single copyright holder 
to talk to in order to request a license change or exception. Take for 
instance GRASS and QGIS: who should one talk to?

I speak from experience: I had to refrain from using QGIS in a 
(closed-source) project for a client not long ago because of its GPL 
license. If there had been a single copyright holder I'd have talked to 
that person instead of starting from scratch, but with multiple 
copyright holders that simply made QGIS a no-go and the QGIS project as 
a whole lost some potential users and contributors.

-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/