Yes you are right. Of course for a project like MPIR it would have to be something like B. We'd have to have a well defined "MPIR Group" which would be allowed to make decisions about commercial use. This group could consist of the current active developers (and all interested past contributors) who did not simply license their contributions LGPL.
All contributors who did not just use LGPL would have to agree to allow the MPIR Group to make a decision about commercial licensing when contributing their code. Obviously the MPIR Group would have to have some kind of well-defined voting procedure to decide when to allow commercial use. Anyhow, as William Stein has noted, this isn't practical for now. For the time being all contributions are under D. But it is an interesting question. It's interesting to know that QT made this work! I wonder what was peculiar about their situation which mandated it!? Bill. 2008/11/16 Gonzalo Tornaria <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 9:23 AM, Bill Hart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I realise there are only four things that really matter to me: >> >> 1) That my copyright notice be maintained. >> 2) That any offer to redistribute in binary form is accompanied by an >> equal offer to redistribute in source form (the code should always be >> open in the academic sense - open for study, open for verification). >> 3) That redistribution of the code in binary or source form as part of >> any closed source packages is prohibited without my explicit written >> permission. >> 4) Redistribution with modification is allowed (subject to terms 1-3). >> >> [...] >> >> It's more permissive than the GPL as commercial use is permitted as >> long as I have given explicit permission. It would also get right >> around the whole v2/v3 and LGPL/GPL debates. > > I think what you describe is just like GPL. Indeed, if you release > your own code under the GPL, you can always give explicit permission > for commercial use on top of that! Example: QT is released to the open > under GPL, but commercial use is permitted as long as trolltech > (nokia) has given explicit permission (in this case they do it in > exchange for a license fee). > > This is ok as long as all the code is yours. Do you expect people to > contribute to eMPIRe under "GPL + commercial use is permitted as long > as Bill Hart has given explicit permission"? > > In other words, I see 4 options: > A) copyright is assigned to a central person/entity, which then has > the right to allow commercial use. > B) copyright is not assigned, but the license explicitly grants the > right to allow commercial use to a well defined authority. > C) commercial use is disallowed in any case (GPL) > D) commercial use is allowed in any case (LGPL) > > Anything between C and D seems to require an arbiter to allow or > disallow commercial use (as in A or B), > > Gonzalo > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mpir-devel" group. To post to this group, send email to mpir-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mpir-devel?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
