Basically, according to our solicitors, the ADPL makes ArsDigita's code more attractive to certain commercial organisations who may be interested in working with (and thus paying) arsDigita but need to create a closed source product.
In our case the opportunity exists to enter into a commercial arrangement with an organisation whereby they might use our code (and thus our services) as part of an overall offering. However adoption of the GPL would make this impractical, given that we'd also like to make the source publicly available.
Then somebody has misread the GPL. The GPL doesn't say that once you write code under the GPL, you must post a tarball of it to freshmeat. What it says is that anyone you give an executable to must also have access to the source. In the case of these commercial organizations, do they intend to resell the product?
I'd be surprised if it were not possible to create a license that allowed inclusion in 'closed' products of source code, only with contractual agreement of the author.
This is implicit by the very nature of software licences. If you don't accept the licence offered, you get in touch with the author and see about it being made available under a different licence.
