[OSM-legal-talk] PD vs SA: The eternal battle

[Rob Myers]

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 12:42 PM, Richard Fairhurst
<richard at systemed.net> wrote:

> In brief:
>
> 1. Apple takes KHTML

Despite it being (weak) copyleft.

> 2. Apple adds 8 zillion features and does only what is required by the
> share-alike licence (LGPL), i.e. making the source available in its
> rawest form
> 3. KHTML devs, and others, complain that the resulting "code bomb"
> cannot be easily integrated back into Konqueror. Cue outraged Slashdot
> articles and so on

WebKit was a fork, not Apple joining KDE.

> 4. Under community pressure, Apple changes its practices, and works to
> reintegrate ("unfork") the code, _even_though_they_don't_have_to_

They do however have to release the code, which is how we got to this point.

> 5. QtWebKit now exists for KDE, KHTML is significantly better, half
> the world is using an open-source standards-compliant browser, etc.
> etc. etc.
> 6. We all live happily ever after, apart from maybe the IE devs ;)

They get paid. ;-)

> So share-alike itself actually ain't that helpful if the person
> doesn't really want to contribute back.

Contributing back to a project is not the point, having the freedom to
use the software in whichever fork one encounters it is. Apple failed
on both counts.

> But if you use community pressure, rather than trying to get medieval
> on their licensing ass, you can get a great result - whatever the
> licence.

I am not going to argue against the power of community, but Apple and
bus companies and J. Random Enclosurer are not in the "community" as
socially rather than legally constituted. Which means that projects
haven't always got a great result regardless of the licence in the
past.

- Rob.