The Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation says the organization wants to make the General Public License (GPL) compatible with the Apache License. A while back we took a look at the oft-maligned GPL v3 draft proposal, but based on the FSF's desire to include Apache license compatibility, that draft may see some changes before it becomes official.
However, the FSF's definition of compatible isn't the two way exchange you might imagine. If the proposal is accepted, code released under the Apache license could be rolled into GPL licensed projects and released under the GPL, however the reverse scenario would still not be possible.
The relationship between the two would effectively be partial compatibility, giving the GPL community access to Apache licensed code without returning the favor.
In essence the Apache license would have the same relationship to the GPL that the BSD license has now. The BSD license is compatible with the GPL but the GPL is not compatible with the BSD license.
If all this license talk makes your head spin you're not alone, and in fact licenses may not be as big of a concern as the FSF would like you to believe. Ian Murdock, Sun's chief operating systems officer, tells CNet that since many open source projects are largely separate, “I don't think software licenses matter as much as they used to.”
