Hey all, I studied long and hard in order to bone up for the “GPLv3 and You” talk I did today. Events like SugarCon are really terrific as “forcing events” to go deep, deep, deep into a topic that may not be top of mind before the event.So, like a lawyer preparing for a jury trial, I made sure I was well-versed, over-prepared, and simply brimming with GPLv3 wisdom. After all, I didn’t have to go this deep since last July when we announced we’ll support GPLv3 beginning with Sugar Community Edition 5.0.

Well, an odd thing happened. Nobody really cared!!! A pall of silence descended over the ballroom when I finished my expertly crafted dissertation and asked, with some trepidation: “Are there any questions?”. Crickets, crickets, and more crickets.

Upon reflection, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the response. I think we Sugar types vastly overestimated the importance of GPLv3 to the average developer who, after all, is concerned only with getting their jobs done under tight deadlines back at the shop. Yes, if they ever intend to distribute, er, “convey”, his or her code … well, then they’ll think back to that brilliant dissertation they heard at SugarCon. And even then most really don’t care as GPLv3 makes it easy.

I’ve come to understand that GPLv3 is really “inside baseball” for the vast majority of our community. Lesson learned … on to the next topic.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 4:35 pm and is filed under General, SugarCon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.