[News.eclipse.foundation] Re: GNU License text version

["Randy D. Smith" <randy.d.smith@xxxxxxxxx>]

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)