The GPLv3 Conversation Continues

Stephen O'Grady jumped into the OpenSolaris, CDDL, and GPLv3 conversation this week -- Should OpenSolaris Use the GPLv3 License? The Q&A. It's a long and thoughtful post with about 20 comments (so far). O'Grady is a voice of intelligence and moderation who is most welcome in this debate.

Things seem to be winding down a bit from the initial conversation, which split into two dozen sub-threads on the OpenSolaris forums (see below for thread links). More background here and here, too. I've learned a great deal during this conversation, so I'm thankful Stephen Harpster started it. And I see Harpster's original blog has about 12 comments (so far).

Many in the OpenSolaris community clearly asserted themselves, but many more remained quiet. Too many, actually. At times things got a bit rough, too, which was unfortunate since I know for a fact we are many times way too intimidating for new people to engage. I hope that changes over time, but I also believe that the flamers are a distinct minority. In general, though, I'd say that there were some very thoughtful arguments presented on multiple sides of the license issue, as well as multiple threads outlining critical engineering and community development issues. I bet this all spins up and down for a bit longer as the issue comes to fruition. And that's all good. The fact that Sun is not making a decision on this all alone is critical. To me that demonstrates that Sun respects the OpenSolaris Community and is very much part of the community.

Some people have asked me if discussions like this really escalate our conversation numbers. And the answer is no. What happens, actually, is that massive community debates like this suck all the wind out of the room and replace other conversations. They rarely go much past one week, too. So, the past six days of GPL talk put numbers on the board that look pretty much like the six days before that. Interesting.

OpenSolaris and GPLv3 threads (I may have missed a few):

More to come, I'm sure ...

Feb 06, 2007

Link

Comments:

May be, Sun and the FOSS community should bail this teacher out of jail. Something akin to Sun buying Hewlet and Packard art in the Bay Area.

Posted by Joe on February 07, 2007 at 03:43 AM JST #

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