Posts Tagged ‘skype’

On “Welte vs. Skype Technologies”

So, Skype backed down.

Now, I don’t have anything against Skype, or closed source products in general. (Heck, I write closed source code for a living.) But you’ve got to play fair and either accept a license completely, or decline it completely.

The GPL takes the default Copyright scheme and makes it more free. Skype argued that the GPL was illegal, unconstitutional and responsible for the deaths of kittens. But whether that’s true or not is irrelevant. If it were ruled that the GPL was unconstitutional in Germany, then that would leave GPL’d code still subject to plain old Copyright. So you can’t just do what you like with it.

It’s like having an orchard of apple trees with a sign outside: “Free apples. Pick your own. No tractors.” Then someone drives a tractor around your orchard, claiming “who are you to stop me driving my tractor?”. Well, it’s my orchard. My apples. My rules.

So we wait with baited breath: will Skype quietly can the offending product, or release the code? I’m hoping for the code - otherwise some folks might accuse GPL of stifling innovation. And we don’t want GPL to be a big scary monster.

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Filed under tech : Comments (0) : May 15th, 2008