On 25-Jul-2005, Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
Generally, writing new licenses for Free Software is a well-meaning, but ill-advised activity that usually diminishes the usefulness of the software released under it, in the worst case to the point of becoming useless: This is in particular true when they end up being GPL incompatible and thus cannot intercombine with the vast majority of Free Software that already exists.
This was my first concern when I saw the announcement. They referred to "an in-depth analysis of existing licenses", but I have seen no evidence they are even aware of the strong message from both FSF and OSI that creating new licenses is usually inferior to choosing an existing, well-understood recommended one.
The last version of the EUPL we were presented with was a copyleft, GPL incompatible Free Software license. We are therefore sceptical about its usefulness and would rather propose to cooperate on the further evolution of the GNU General Public License (GPL) for which the FSFE would be the European contact point and will gladly work with the Commission.
Thanks for taking this on, Georg. Here's hoping license proliferation can be prevented in this important case; your efforts in that direction are appreciated.