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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

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JoshTriplett·

GPL would be fine too; I'd just like something that actually qualifies as FOSS, rather than something proprietary.

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Baseline FreeRTOS was "GPL" but it had a silly clause prohibiting you from publishing benchmarks.

GPL is also a non-FOSS license. It says it is, but its not.

Can't wait until the GPL is a rarely used license.

It meets the Free Software definition, the OSD, and the DFSG. And even anti-copyleft zealots rarely descend as far as to attempt to claim (falsely) that it isn't a FOSS license, rather than simply complaining that they find it distasteful.

We will be back to the world of public domain and freeware.

Everything will have a light version open source, with the actual goodies only available in the commercial version.

Until then we have the actual goodies only available in the cloud. ;)

Would you care to elaborate on what you believe makes the GPL a non-FOSS license?

It definitely limits the freedom of both the author and user, by restricting the means in which the software may be distributed and the limiting author's right to add additional restrictions (the "all distributions must adhere to these restrictions but can't add more" clause which makes it incompatible with the Apple App Store, for example). It's "Free" in the Free Software Foundation sense but not really in the way some people think of "freedom."

It limits the freedom of the author yes. It severely expands the freedom of the user. That is the whole point of the license, any user has the code available to modify, inspect, or audit himself. I don't see how you think that it limits the freedom of the user too.

I think you don't know what GPL is intended for. It's to give the USER the four basic freedoms, not the dev, not the author, the user.

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