Re: [PATCH 0/2] LICENSES: add and use copyleft-next-0.3.1

Bradley M. Kuhn
2021-07-08T17:53:11Z

Greg KH wrote:
> Let's keep it simple please, and not add new licenses for no real good
> reason if at all possible.

I've stated a number of real good reasons to keep copyleft-next as a
dual-licensing option; they seem to have not been refuted here. Indeed, this
point is quite salient:

Joe Perches wrote:
>>> You can ask but it's the submitter's choice to license their code however
>>> they desire.

… to which I'd add, as long as the license is GPLv2-only-compatible, which of
course (GPLv2-only|copyleft-next) is.

Rest is admittedly a bit OT:

Greg also noted:
> I have stated in public many times to companies that try to add
> dual-licensed new kernel code that they should only do so if they provide a
> really good reason

We can agree to disagree on the differences in how company vs. individual
requests and their "good reasons" are handled/prioritized; I think we'd both
agree it's actually moot anyway. While it's an important topic, I apologize
for raising that as it was off-topic to the issue at hand.

On that off-topic point, Tim Bird added:
>> It's not at all purely symbolic to dual license (GPLv2-only|2-Clause-BSD).
>> That dual-licensing has allowed the interchange of a lot of code between
>> the BSD Unixes and Linux, that otherwise would not have happened.

This is a good point, but the same argument is of course valid for
copyleft-next-licensed projects. While there are currently fewer than those
than BSD-ish projects, I don't think Linux should stand on ceremony of “your
project must be this tall to ride this ride” and share code with us … and
then there are the aspirational arguments that I made in my prior email.
--
Bradley M. Kuhn - he/him

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