I was asked to judge a debate on the merits of the EPL, GPL, and BSD licenses. Note that I'm not judging the licenses themselves, but rather how well each representative presented their position.
▼ EPL - Mike Milinkovich
• +1 argued that we're all really on the same side (more agreement than disagreement)
• +1 quoted Simon Phipps
• -1 irrelevant reference to "universal donor/recipient" phrase
• +1 defined "weak copyleft"
• +1 quoted Danese Cooper about lawyers
• +1 good description of EPL
• +1 gave commercial examples of EPL
• +1 EPL is written as a legal document, but -1 in describing how that applied
• +1 promoted why EPL covers patents as well, but -1 for not explaining it
• +1 EPL is good for various business models
• +1 for pointing out lies, damn lies, statistics, comparing project count vs usage
• +1 for differentiating commercialization of open source vs using open source for goals
• +1 for saying EPL provides similar protection to GPL in terms of permanent protection
• +1 even redhat ships EPL code
• +1 for clarifying the science problem, explaining how GPL requires credit/ownership to flow uphill
• +1 for describing why governments (not US) should use EPL
• +1 think through the choices you make (be informed)
▼ GPL - Matt Asay
• +1 redhat is making money with GPL
• -1 "GPL is most dominant license" - who cares... point not made
• -1 "it's about trust" but failed to present why it's more trustable
• +1 "it's about sharing", simple to understand
• +1 describing how people who choose to want their code always open can use this
• +1 that it's about distribution, not about internal usage
• -1 "more code under GPL" - again, without justifying why "more popular" = "better"
• +1 explaining why it's good for business
• -1 for using "bludgeoning the competition" without describing what that means
• -1 for again relying on "more people use GPL"
• -1 for some weird "movie reviewer analogy"
• -1 for again going to "popularity" without justifying it
• -1 for comparing "giving away software" to "trusting someone you loan your car to"
• -1 for bad analogy with science (confuses use with attribution)
• +1 for pointing out that individuals choose GPL knowing that their software not being hijacked
• -1 for again using "most popular" as justification
▼ BSD - David Maxwell
• +1 explaining why we need licenses ("public domain" might not even mean anything)
• +1 for explaining some history (oldest license of three)
• +1 for reading the entire license
• +1 for pointing out that the other two would not have enough time to do that :)
• +1 for describing how complex licenses (GPL, EPL) are more frequently misunderstood by normal people
• +1 for not being a lawyer :)
• +1 for describing how BSD is more trusting than GPL
• +1 for explaining concern of using GPL with contractors
• +1 for pointing out the redefinition of "contributor" in the EPL
• +1 for pointing out that the freedom is granted "to the software" in GPL, whuh!
• +1 for pointing out VHS vs Beta as "winner is not always best"
• +1 for pointing out that the scripting languages all use some form of BSD license
• +1 for pointing out BSD forks do share a lot of code back and forth
• +1 for pointing out how widespread BSD-licensed code is used (Apple, etc)
• +1 for explaining the sour grapes of "getting ripped off by commercial" being without justification
• +1 for providing BSD as alternative for EPL for government items
