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Why the GPL: Futureproofing against management changes | 484 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Why the GPL: Futureproofing against management changes
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 16 2012 @ 09:30 AM EDT
Thing is, that only works if GPL is the only game in town. Unless you are
advocating vendor lock-in, I don't see how your scenario make sense. In the
longer term, I don't see GPL ever becoming the only game in town for compilers
as long as there are companies like Apple who do not want to use GPL code
whenever possible and is willing to "reimplement the whole thing from
scratch".

Like it or not, GPL doesn't "future proof". All it does is spell out
expectations, try to encourage contributions and sometimes coerce release of
source code. If people find that the software or project doesn't do what they
want, they will go elsewhere or even go as far as to create something completely
new that may not use the GPL.

For GCC, if it survives, it won't be due to the GPL, it will be due to the
changes to the project that will attract developers that the project needs. The
reasons any developer would join the project may or may not include the GPL, but
the GPL alone doesn't "future proof" anything at all.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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