Do we still need weak copyleft? (was Re: Exceptions to copyleft-next)

[Bradley M. Kühn]

Theodore Tso wrote:
> What I objected to do with the FSF argument that the GPL infected
> across shared library links, which made aboslutely no sense
> vis-a-vis U.S. copyright law.

[citation needed]

What case or statute speaks to this?

The only one I'm aware of that pushes this envelope a little is the
Apple. v. Psystar, in which Apple successfully argued that separately
distributed modules that dynamically linked with Apple's software
required Apple's permission.

> The argument seemed to be that as long as the GPL and proprietary
> code was in the same address space copyright would apply, even
> though no distribution was happening at that point.

No Court has fully and completely considered this issue.  As I've
told you for decades, on this vector, copyleft will extend as far as
copyright (or its case law) takes it.  We don't get to decide that,
the Courts and legislators do.

OTOH, rarely has anyone *actually* wanted to test that, anyway.  It's
not the place where software freedom was most directly impacted.

> This is a case where the license incompatibility between GPL 3 and
> LGPL 2 really bit users in the *ss.

Please don't get me started on that.  I sent an email to everyone
with authority over the final text of GPLv3 at the end of the GPLv3
process (but before it was released) pointing out that that it was as
disaster that LGPLv2.1-only was incompatible with GPLv3.  Nobody
cared except Richard Fontana.  See, there's a reason he and I are
here 20 years later as the two working on this project, and everyone
else involved in GPLv3 don't work on copyleft drafting anymore. 😆

> This is a real problem, but I'd argue the probleem exists for
> copylefted code as well.  There are a number of GPL'ed code bases
> (coreutils, emacs, etc) that are arguably underfunded.  The license
> may not be the strong determinant about whether companies will fund
> FOSS project or not, or whether there will be plenty of community
> contributions.

Agreed, but my argument wasn't an if-and-only-if style.  Copyleft
doesn't solve all of the world's problems, only some of them.  My
point was that Big Tech is, in most cases, not more likely to fund an
LGPLv2.1'd thing over a GPLv3'd thing.  I probably depends a *lot*
more on the thing than its license, and ultimately non-copyleft
generally allows for projects to get funding — but only for stuff
that doesn't compete with what the companies want to proprietarize.

> And has the stronger copyleft enforcement really improved the
> number of contributions to Busybox?

The above (and the entire paragraph that it finished) is really just
a troll so let's leave it there.
--
     -- bkühn — he/them — On Fediverse (via Mastodon): https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn