Re: bsd license question

[Matthew Weigel <unique@idempot.net>]

On 2 Mar, 2005, at 11:09 PM, Kurt B. Kaiser wrote:

> Yes.  The original code will still be there.  But where will the
> leadership, knowledge, and momentum be?

How will that not kill a GPL-licensed package?

>> The GPL does not provide one additional iota of protection if the
>> copyright holders of a project sell their rights.
>
>> From a practical standpoint it's unlikely you'll be able to get all
> the copyright holders on a GPL project to agree to do this.

You're already supposing that the dev team will.  From there, they
need to merely strip out the bits that aren't their copyright; you
seem to be unaware that they can do this.  Hell, they can do like with
Sharity Light, and simply re-implement the whole shebang - banking not
on existing code, but on the proven quality of the developers who are
familiar with the problem space.

Commercial developers already do that kind of poaching - poaching from
other companies not for the knowledge of that company's products, but 
for
the knowledge of the problem space and the proven ability.

> With a BSD-like license you don't have to ask, and that's the beauty
> of it.

Being a copyright holder on the majority of it, you don't have to ask
on the majority of it, regardless of the license.
-- 
  Matthew Weigel
  unique&idempot.ent
  Unique and Idempotent