Fauxpen source licenses (both of the “business” variety as well as the so-called “ethical” variety) have a fatal flaw: they prioritize the interests of the rightsholder over that of the community or the user. They are thus not so different than a standard proprietary EULA in concept, even if they are more permissive.
The reason this is an issue is because it inhibits code reuse. True free software licenses don’t privilege the interests of the rightsholder any more than copyright law already does, because in the free software movement the developer is just a fellow user/member of the community. In other words, the GPL is the GPL is the GPL no matter who the rightsholder of the GPL code is. This means that code from many different rightsholders can be mixed together into a single program with no issue. Linux, of course, is probably the biggest example of this.
So?
Fauxpen source licenses (both of the “business” variety as well as the so-called “ethical” variety) have a fatal flaw: they prioritize the interests of the rightsholder over that of the community or the user. They are thus not so different than a standard proprietary EULA in concept, even if they are more permissive.
The reason this is an issue is because it inhibits code reuse. True free software licenses don’t privilege the interests of the rightsholder any more than copyright law already does, because in the free software movement the developer is just a fellow user/member of the community. In other words, the GPL is the GPL is the GPL no matter who the rightsholder of the GPL code is. This means that code from many different rightsholders can be mixed together into a single program with no issue. Linux, of course, is probably the biggest example of this.