This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz by Sidnei da Silva. Original Post: GPL Considered Harmful? Feed Title: awkly.org Feed URL: http://awkly.org/categories.rdf?category=Python Feed Description: dreamcatching :: making your dreams come true Latest Python Buzz Posts Latest Python Buzz Posts by Sidnei da Silva Latest Posts From awkly.org

I had some trouble seeing why people would see Plone's licensing as GPL as stealing, but Chris McDonough makes some good points on his comment to Paul's post.

While I agree that it's suboptimal for getting Plone's improvements back into Zope, people must keep in mind that the requirement that code checked in to the Zope repository must be licensed under the ZPL isn't optimal either.

For Plone's attitude, I don't see it as stealing. Plone is a great tool, and lots of experimental, mostly user-experience related stuff ends up into Plone. However, when there is some framework-related enhancement required for Plone's evolution it (mostly) always end up being contributed to CMF/Zope.

I, as a developer, have checked in and contributed much more code into Zope and CMF in the last two years than in Plone itself. Those fixes were very important for Zope as a whole. Most of them were related to WebDAV/FTP in one way or another. That's mainly because the company I work for, Enfold Systems, has proper WebDAV support as one of the selling points for it's products.

It's sad though to see that outside our stack of products the only mention of WebDAV/FTP is the occasional "I've tried it and it failed miserably". I have a hope that I can help change that.

I have contributed code to several projects under several different licenses, mainly because I don't really care about the whole license non-sense (uhm, a good rhyme). People might be interested in the PolicyHTTPCacheManager which happens to be licensed under the ZPL.

Personally, I would like to see much more convergence of improvements and bug fixes to Zope. Once we were too immature to do that. Very few people could contribute good and valuable code without risking break Zope in some way. The platform is much more stable today, and the people that have been working on it have turned mature enough to now be able to contribute back.

Plone plays a large role on this, because most people's first contact with Zope happens through Plone, and that has resulted in a situation where several excellent programmers are working now with Zope and will be able to contribute in the near future.