On Thu, Dec 20, 2001 at 01:20:09AM -0500, Damian Ryan Eads wrote: [..] > > 1) Would you agree to release it under Apache license or something less > > restrictive than GPL. > > How about moving it into JAKARTA-COMMONS (though SourceForge is fine > > too...)? > > This issue with ritopt's license has been brought up by several people. > Originally, I was not keen on the idea of changing the license because > there didn't seem to be any advantages to the free software community. > The GPL encourages that in return for using your software, developers > give something back. Until recently, I refused to change the license > in support of this principle. However, my stubborness has started to wear > off a little. Changing the license to the LGPL is currently under consideration.
Here's an article that might persuade you :) http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a//policy/2001/12/12/transition.html " Working Without Copyleft It's possible to be an ardent supporter of open source development and not be a fan of copyleft and the General Public License. In this article the authors -- software developers -- relate how they came to embrace copyleft, became disillusioned with its limitations, and consequently turned away from it. " The FSF implicitly paints a picture of evil corporations exploiting the works of programmers. The GPL seems to be designed very much with this in mind. In reality, most corporations are in the services business, not selling software per se. In this context, GPL is inappropriate; it forces all the software created for *one client* to be distributed with source code. Also as the article says, non-copyleft code gets *more* contributions than copylefted, because those services corporations are now free to use and improve the code. There is a strong commercial incentive for improvements to be rolled back into the code base, because maintaining a forked version of a project is expensive, especially when it's not your primary money-earner :) As for LGPL, it's technical shortcomings are indeed problematic, specifically: "The scope of the LGPL is too coarse-grained. The scope is furthermore open to interpretation. It is limited to some fuzzy notion of functional entities ("a collection of software functions and/or data prepared so as to be conveniently linked with application programs")." I gather it's this "open to interpretation" problem which currently means LGPL'ed code cannot be used in Apache projects. --Jeff > Damian > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
