Clubbing baby seals is GPL-compatible: Why Oracle can do better

“Earlier this week I wrote about Oracle’s “new and improved”
Linux kernel, and called the company on its strategy of cloning Red
Hat Enterprise Linux while carrying almost none of the development
burden. But is it fair to ask a company to do more than comply with
the license?

“A couple of commenters and folks on Twitter took issue with the
blog, saying (essentially) “hey, Oracle is abiding by the terms of
the license, how can you criticize them for doing what the license
allows?” A few other folks suggested that Oracle was making a
contribution, by helping to spread Linux. If so, shouldn’t we all
thank Oracle for its role in making Linux more popular in the
enterprise?

“In a word, no. I don’t find either argument very compelling.
The GNU General Public License (GPL) and other open source licenses
dictate the things you’re allowed to do with code. Simply because
the GPL allows parasitic behavior, doesn’t mean that Oracle can’t
be called out when it’s not being a good community citizen. Some
see the GPL’s reciprocal requirements as restrictive — but
even the requirements to give back changes and share code only go
so far.”

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