You're mixing up freedom and power. It's impossible to have a license more free than the GPL. The extra thing that permissive licenses give you isn't more freedom, but rather the power to withhold freedom from others. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html for more details.
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GPLv2 does not permit code be incorporated into a GPLv3 licensed project.
GPLv3 does not permit code be incorporated into a GPLvv licensed project.
The M.I.T. licence, for instance, permits both.
This is something the F.S.F. always fails to address in these talks; they speak proudly how the GPL guarantees that code never end up in properietary software, which is true, but only because that is a special case of code not ending up in essentially any project with only a slightly difference licence, including proprietary software.
the GPL guarantees that the code be off limits to proprietary software, permissive free software, other copyleft than the GPL, and even other versions of the GPL, and this is something they bury, and continually fail to address.
The FSF does address version incompatibility, the problem is that some popular projects flat out refuse to follow their guidance.
The FSF uses the approach of asking people to release programs under “GNU GPL version N or any later version.” This licensing is compatible with version N, and also with N+1 (because it offers version N+1 as an option). When you combine code under “GPL 3 or later” with code under “GPL 2 or later”, the license of the combination is their intersection, which is “GPL 3 or later”.
That doesn't solve the problem at all.
Licensing under GPLv2+ only allows one's code to be used in all GPL projects, not other copyleft licences, but that's not the full problem: it does not allow one to use code of anything other than GPLv2+. At this point one can't use GPLv2 or GPLv3 code any more, only GPLv2+ code.
Furthermore, licencing under GPLv+ puts blind faith into the F.S.F.; it irrevocably licenses one's code under a licence that doesn't exist yet.
When GPLv4 is eventually released, the software is now released under it, and GPLv4 might contain provisions one doesn't agree with, but one can't revoke it now.
IT's absolutely not a solution.
> not other copyleft licences
The CDDL was intentionally written to be incompatible with the GPL. Which other copyleft licenses do you have in mind, and what advantages do they have over GPL-compatible licenses?
> When GPLv4 is eventually released, the software is now released under it, and GPLv4 might contain provisions one doesn't agree with, but one can't revoke it now.
If you release your code under a permissive license, it's basically guaranteed to be compatible with the future GPLv4, so you're in that situation anyway.
> The CDDL was intentionally written to be incompatible with the GPL. Which other copyleft licenses do you have in mind, and what advantages do they have over GPL-compatible licenses?
What strong copyleft licence do you know that is compatible with any GPL?
The F.S.F. indeed alleges that it was intentional, and perhaps it was, but every single strong copyleft licence is pretty much incompatible with every other — one must go out of one's way to make them compatible and even it's typically an asymmetric compatibility.
Advantages? They obviously do things differently and there's probably a reason why big companies tend to craft their own licence rather than relying upon a template.
Examples:
- Eclipse Public Licence - Mozilla Public Licence 0.1 and 0.2 - Apple Public Licence - Common Development and Distribution Licence - GPLv2 — yes, it should be mentioned as an example
> If you release your code under a permissive license, it's basically guaranteed to be compatible with the future GPLv4, so you're in that situation anyway.
You assume that the only option one have is GPLv2+ or a permissive licence.
Linux is simply released under GPLv2, exactly because Linus Torvalds and many others in it disagree with some of the GPLv3 provisions; ZFS is simply released under the CDDL, and FixFox simply under the MPL.
They have their reasons to choose other licences than GPLv3, because they disagree with some of the provisions thereof.
No I’m not.
There are things that I, as Joe Developer downloading some software can do with BSD licensed code that I can do that I can’t with copylefted code. I am...more free to do with it as I wish.
No amount of GNU/Bloviating will make that not true.
What sorts of things in particular?