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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] GPL license question

From: "Luis EG Ontanon" <luis.ontanon@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:49:31 +0200
On 7/11/07, Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx> wrote:
Martin Warnes schrieb:
> Unfortunately this appears to be the case, which is possibly a shame as
>
I wouldn't call the GPL a shame ;-)

> we have a bunch of plug-in dissectors we would willingly release for
> free download, but it would be a cold day in hell before our lawyers
> agreed to release the source code, even though I doubt there's anything
> of proprietry value in there.
>
Well, there must be a reason that Wireshark contains a lot of dissector
code from company's that rarely do this otherwise.

IMHO: If Wireshark would have been released under a BSD style license
(which would allow what you think of), we would probably have a lot less
dissector variety - as you're probably not the only one thinking this way.

I think instead that , there would be hundreds of wireshark
derivatives some commercial and mostly closed source, none of which
would offer a tenth of the functionality offered by The One GPLd
Wireshark. To quote Linus
"
But for a project I actually care about, I would never choose the BSD
license. The license doesn't encode my fundamental beliefs of "fairness".
I think the BSD license encourages a "everybody for himself" mentality,
and doesn't encourage people to work together, and to merge.
"

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