Restrictive Licenses and Open Source

puredataDuring a discussion with Jean-Noel Montagné, founder of Art-Sensitif (check the Lab in Main D’Oeuvre @ Saint Ouen) and member of Bricolabs initiative, he gave me his view on restrictive Licenses through the Pure Data debate [1] [2] over a license governing PiDiP by Yves De Goyon. I think this represents the fundamental debate which separate true open source such as GPL from politically-oriented statements such as EGPL.

The question here is not to persuade people that they should use EGPL. In fact, they should not, or rather they should never have to use EGPL. But in case of abuse, the message is here: there is an alternative which can make a whole difference if some end users start to abuse the fundamental right of the author – that his will and intent be respected, or start neglecting his founding role, well, then he may remind these end-users that they live in an eco-system where all abuses cannot always go unanswered.

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