# A Hug is Symmetric
-An embrace is warm when two are pulled together.
+An embrace is warm when two are pulled together.
A one arm hug is a patronizing squeeze that makes
for a (bad) photo op.
This little blog post is my > 140 response to my
-new friend [@dberkholz][dberkholz]'s post
-[The Story Of Data: Whither the GPL? Why we don’t need it anymore][dberkholz_story]. I met Donnie at [FOSDEM][fosdem] this year
+new friend [@dberkholz][dberkholz]'s post
+[The Story Of Data: Whither the GPL? Why we don’t need it anymore][dberkholz_story]. I met Donnie at [FOSDEM][fosdem] this year
just after he joined [RedMonk][redmonk] -- the analyst
-firm that is essential for anyone in software
+firm that is essential for anyone in software
development to follow. (Full Disclosure: RedMonk and Informatique, Inc.
do not have any business affiliation).
During our first [Legal Issues DevRoom][fosdem_legal_issues] at FOSDEM
we had several talks touching on the impact of software
-(and other artifact) licensing on FLOSS. Of special note:
+(and other artifact) licensing on FLOSS. Of special note:
John Sullivan, Executive
Director of the Free Software Foundation gave a talk "Is copyleft
-being framed?" and Richard Fontana, Red Hat's Open Source Licensing
-and Patent Counsel gave a talk, "The (possible) decline of the GPL, and what to do about it". Slides for these and other talks are available
+being framed?" and Richard Fontana, Red Hat's Open Source Licensing
+and Patent Counsel gave a talk, "The (possible) decline of the GPL, and what to do about it". Slides for these and other talks are available
[[here|/fosdem/LegalIssuesDevRoom/Speakers]]. Sullivan's data
-and methodology are available for review and suggest that
+and methodology are available for review and suggest that
the use of GPL is vibrant.
I do hope that my friend and former Sun colleague [Rich Sands][richsands] --
## 1. Compliance is complicated
-In this era of continuous development and continuous
+In this era of continuous development and continuous
deployment powered by tools like the uber awesome [Jenkins][jenkins]
you can't really say with a straight face that making
a tarball and publishing it somewhere is hard.
one of the build products.
For the massive, commercial enterprise which is Java™
-Oracle manages to publish the [source][openjdk_source]
-code for [OpenJDK][openjdk]. Under the GPL.
+Oracle manages to publish the [source][openjdk_source]
+code for [OpenJDK][openjdk]. Under the GPL.
And Oracle publishes it from a tightly intermingled source
base comprising open as well as closed, proprietary components.
When inbound == outbound licensing and everyone is symmetric
footing collaboration *and* contribution thrive.
-[Simon Phipps][webmink], also a friend and former Sun colleague,
+[Simon Phipps][webmink], also a friend and former Sun colleague,
has written about the health of projects such
-as [Libre Office][libreoffice] and assessing the health of
+as [Libre Office][libreoffice] and assessing the health of
FLOSS [governance][scorecard].
## 3. Commercial products == proprietary products
## 5. You can't build a business on restrictive software
Jeremy Allison has clearly articulated why the [GPLv3
-is essential][gpl_samba] for the commercial Samba marketplace to
+is essential][gpl_samba] for the commercial Samba marketplace to
thrive. He talks about symmetry providing a necessary
level playing field (and he spoke about this [recently][lp_2012]).
So whether or not the GPL is in decline (or not) only
scratches the surface of the how the FLOSS revolution has [transformed
information technology][how_linux] in the past 20 years.
-I bet the that Story of Data in the next 20 years will
+I bet the that Story of Data in the next 20 years will
tell us that symmetric collaboration is the big win.
Ultimately the key thing is to remember that permissively
licensed software is also Free Software.
+
[dberkholz]: https://twitter.com/#!/dberkholz
[dberkholz_story]: http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2012/04/05/whither-the-gpl-why-we-dont-need-it-anymore/
[fosdem]: http://fosdem.org/2012/