Last week, we noted IBM blogger Bob Sutor's endorsement of GPLv3 (here & here).

We did not dig deep enough, because apparently IBM is of multiple minds. Blogger Barbara Darrow wrote about a March 28 IBM Research show-and-tell for reporters and analysts:

Asked by CRN about his take on the third implementation of the GNU General Public License, IBM Software General Manager Steve Mills didn't mince words.

"At some point you become so shrill and beyond what's required that you lose the audience and the audience moves on to something else," he said.

Mills was referring to the Free Software Foundation's attempt to restrict the use of cross-patent licenses in the new GPL. those restructions, FSF proponents say, could lead to a fork in the Linux code. . . . .

"We'll have to see what finally evolves through the [GPL] process, it's going through an update and the Free Software Foundation has a particular view of free software. Free software is a wonderful thing but there's also a business model."

"We think there are other licensing techniques, the Apache license and others are somewhat less onerous. We use them ourselves. We don't use the GPL for reasons of its restrictions," Mills said.

posted by James DeLong @ 6:22 AM | Software

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