During FOSDEM, I got to meet several people from the speakers and audience, providing me with insightful questions, remarks and a surprisingly warm welcome, even from people who SHOULD be against EGPL.

For example, Bdale Garbee from Debian (and HP Open Source & Linux Chief Technologist) said “Well, it’s clear that EGPL is orthogonal to Debian, but I can definitely see where you’re coming from and the clear political message that this License sends to the people using Open Source in questionable way”.

Some Open Source Developers immediately got the idea and explained to me various horor stories on usage of their work: either from publicly-founded projects being misused or discoveries about their code being used for goals clearly against their ethics. One comment related to Open Source Software was particularly acute: “Politics and managers don’t listen nor understand the licenses and ways of Open Source, but what they get is that through EGPL, they may have to buy software that was previously free just based on their own actions and goals, and this, they will clearly understand it.”

Globally, a very interesting take on EGPL with a welcome that I didn’t expect.