[OSM-legal-talk] Usage of ODbL

[Rob Myers]

On 09/30/2010 01:06 PM, John Smith wrote:
>
> GPL started because Richard
> Stallman shared code with a company and they refused to share the
> changes back.

I assume you're referring to the Lisp Machine Wars. The company was 
Symbolics. Their appropriation of AI Lab code was the latest symptom of 
the general problem that companies were removing the freedom of software 
users rather than the problem in itself.

GNU was started to tackle that general problem.

The GPL was written some time later, based on the Emacs licence.

And, as I say, not all GPL licenced code is grabbed by GNU.

- Rob.