Hey Olly,
We traded emails a while back Re:Snowball stemmers.
> Ideally I'd prefer Xapian to be LGPL licenced (or perhaps something less
> restrictive even). But the current developers don't own all the
> copyrights, so we can't just pick another licence.
>
> Xapian is derived from software which was released under the GPL by
> BrightStation plc. BrightStation's plan was to sell licences to those
> wanting to use the code but unwilling to GPL their own code.
>
> I tried to negotiate a relicensing with those who now own the
> BrightStation copyright (or at least claim to), but it seemed to just be
> an infinite timesink.
Yep, this is one of the problems with Open Source. It would be smart
for all licenses to have a 'time horizon' on them where if the copyright
is not updated in 5-10 years it becomes either public-domain or the
copyright is assigned to some third party.
> I figured a better use of the time would be to simply rewrite any code
> we couldn't convince the author to relicence. It's certainly not my
> major focus right now, but it's slowly happening naturally.
Here's a proposal for you:
Could you break down what portions of Xapian that are 'ownership clean'
and able to be changed into the LGPL?
We're solving a lot of the same problems and it seems like we could be
sharing code a bit.
Thanks!
--
Neal Richter
Knowledgebase Developer
RightNow Technologies, Inc.
Customer Service for Every Web Site
Office: 406-522-1485
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