Re: Recommendation for a CL data structures library
Nicolas Neuss lastn...@kit.edu writes: Raffael Cavallaro raffaelcavall...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com writes: Using them would place their employer or the commercial organization to which they belong under the obligation of publishing all of the source code for any released product that included your library. As a result, most people working on commercial published software, or who contemplate doing so in the future, simply avoid gpl libraries altogether. Here is a question which I find rather interesting: Is in-house use of GPLed software allowed? It is quite clear that using GPLed software by a single developer to run a commercial web server for example is allowed. But in the case of multiple developers inside a company one could either argue that the company operates as an entity, or alternatively that the company by letting one of their developers combine GPLed software with their own product is forced to give her/him the whole software under GPL. In-house use would be outside of the scope of the GPL, since no distribution would occur. A more interesting question would be what happens with respect to holdings, and the daughter companies. In this case, I would argue distribution occurs (invoicing would have to occur legally AFAIK), and therefore GPL would apply. Which doesn't mean that YOU would get access to the code of course, only that the daughter company who buys it from another daughter company would get it (and be able to hire YOU instead of the sister company if them need a patch and the sister is unable or unwilling to provide it). -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ ___ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
Re: Recommendation for a CL data structures library
Nicolas Neuss lastn...@kit.edu writes: p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) writes: In-house use would be outside of the scope of the GPL, since no distribution would occur. This means that in-house distribution to employees would not count as distribution in the GPL sense. OK, this might indeed be the most reasonable point of view. Yes, definitely. First, the most efficient companies won't have any distribution. The new software would be instealled on the file server, and everybody could use it from here. And even in the less efficient companies, employees don't install softwarem (it's the job of the IT jockeys). -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ ___ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
Re: Recommendation for a CL data structures library
Raffael Cavallaro raffaelcavall...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com writes: On 2010-03-21 15:29:44 -0400, John Hasler said: Of course, if the possibility that someone might pass the software on worries you, the solution is simple: don't link to GPL works. Which is why many developers choose to avoid this possibility and use LGPL/LLGPL/BSD/MIT/Apache licensed libraries instead. And now we've come full circle. Sure. And the question remains why you should imposes your choices on me? -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ ___ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
Re: Recommendation for a CL data structures library
RG rnospa...@flownet.com writes: In article ho7v0o$rf...@news.eternal-september.org, Raffael Cavallaro raffaelcavall...@pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com wrote: On 2010-03-21 22:14:30 -0400, Pascal J. Bourguignon said: Sure. And the question remains why you should imposes your choices on me? Not only am I not imposing anything on you, I've already offered to pay you for a commercial license. So you can have your cake (GPL licensing) and eat it too (paid commercial licensing). My principal objection to the GPL is that its license requirements regarding opening source code make it very unpopular with many commercial developers, and therefore whenever possible, they choose non-GPL alternatives. That's a much better way of putting it than your original formulation. In short, I don't think GPL licensing gets you anything additional in terms of getting code open sourced. ... I think people should avoid GPL licensing their work as a pragmatic means of ensuring maximal adoption. Here is where you are imposing your choices on others. Not everyone shares this quality metric of yours. Some people have goals other than insuring maximal adoption, like, oh, I don't know, making money for example. Such people might want to use the copyright laws not to force others to create open-source software but to create artificial scarcity in order to drive up prices. One can argue whether or not this strategy will be effective. One can argue (as Stallman does) that one ought not choose this quality metric for moral or political reasons. But neither the quality metric nor the strategy are unreasonable a priori. Indeed these are the questions. I will have to think more about it, and may be change the licence in the future (perhaps this year). I also would like to contribute some of my code to some common library and this would certainly require a change of license anyway. But I need more time to think about it and work on it. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ ___ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
