On 25 Feb 2011, at 12:49, Ben wrote:
I'll try and contact the original author to see if he can accommodate
the FPC project with that code.
Acceptable licenses include a modified LGPL license (modified as
described in http://svn.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/rtl/COPYING.FPC?revision=1
) and a BSD license without the advertising clause (such as the
"Modified BSD License" or "New BSD License").
Or should someone with a more official
capacity (part of FPC team) rather contact the author?
It doesn't matter.
On the other hand... A webserver is a defined algorithm: sockets, TCP,
HTTP, CGI etc... so any web server implementation would essentially
end
up being very similar to the same really. So can a software licence
really be applied to something like that [webserver functionality -
implemented protocols]?
Copyright (which forms the basis for such software licenses) cannot
not apply to "webserver functionality" nor to "implemented protocols".
It does apply to a concrete implementation thereof though. Even if two
people independently writing a web server would end up with exactly
the same code, both programs would be copyrighted by their respective
authors and they alone would be able to determine under what terms the
copy they wrote themselves could be distributed/used.
There are limitations as to what can constitute a "creative work" that
qualifies for copyright protection (e.g., it's unlikely that a regular
"hello world" program would), but a complete webserver implementation
almost certainly does in pretty much every jurisdiction.
Jonas
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