Also not a licensing expert or lawyer, I think a change that breaks the barriers to use of software or otherwise makes it more accessible for people is ultimately a good thing.
However, a licensing choice of change, which carries a symbolic value, among others, can break barriers for some people and build them for the other. A license is a sort of interface so, perhaps, that's a case "to imitate Larry Wall" and choose a dual MIT/(L)GPL licencing. MIT is ok, btw. At the very least, choice of license becomes a non-issue for me if I decide to release, e.g., lua bindings to libmarpa. On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 6:10 AM, Jeffrey Kegler < [email protected]> wrote: > I want to ask opinions about two licensing changes I am thinking of > > 1.) Switching Libmarpa to the MIT/Lua license. Currently there are some > companies that forbid their employees to read LGPL code, because of the > danger to their IP in the code that those employees write. In the case of > Libmarpa, I *want* people to read my code -- they can read my papers, and > the code supplements and illustrates those papers, so it makes little sense > to restrict it. Moving to an MIT license means that people will be able to > use the Libmarpa code freely in proprietary code. There is a downside to > this, but the Lua folks and increasingly the open source community seem to > be embracing this trade-off as a win. > > 2.) Changing both Marpa::R2 and Libmarpa so that anyone contributing code > assigns the copyright to me. The upside of this is that I can change the > license. That's also the downside -- I, or someone who managed to legally > take over the copyright from me, would have the right to change to a > proprietary license. I don't want to minimize this danger -- open source > software being taken proprietary is something that happens a lot. > > I think the trade-offs are in favor of copyright assignment to me. My > plan is to use the right to change the license to make licensing more > liberal. And note that current and past versions would remain subject to > the old open-source licenses -- neither I or anyone else has the right to > rescind those licenses. You could always "re-free" the software by > starting over from a fork of a previous open-source version. It's a > hassle, but it can be done if needed. And in a sense, it's a danger you > are already running -- even if I can't change the licensing, I might become > a flaky project leader, with the same practical effect. > > I'm keeping Marpa::R2 on the LGPL, at least for the time being. With > Libmarpa the asymmetry between by completely-open Theory papers and my > LGPL'd code makes the trade-off pretty clear. And nobody but me has made > any significant contribution to Libmarpa. With Marpa::R2, both these > factors are less clear. And in some months I expect it to be replaced with > a Kollos-based Marpa::R3, so that it's not worthwhile to spend a lot of > time rethinking Marpa::R2 licensing. > > A final note: Libmarpa contains some code derived from LGPL'd code written > by others -- GNU's obstack's, and Ben Pfaff's AVL code. This code must and > will remain LGPL'd. > > Thanks, jeffrey > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "marpa parser" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "marpa parser" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
