Re: Re: Pragmatic License Vote

On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 12:16:56PM -0400, Aryeh M. Friedman wrote:

> 	Essencially the issues are:
> 
> 	1) Some OS purists will not accept anything that is not 100% GPL compatible
> 
> 	2) GPL basically disallows anything except straight pure OS
> 
> 	3) For reason 2 no commerical tool maker will ever write anything for a GPL
> 	   product
> 	
> 	4) There are some serious questions of if the code written under a GPL license is
> 	   also GPL by definition.  LGPL does not resolve that.
> 
> 	The license we are currently favoring for the core implimentation is Mozilla (MPL)
> with very small portions under in a variant of MPL (which does not change the intent just
> the wording of one clause).

For AROS, we had the same discussion (which lasted over three months :-( )
and we finally came up with the MPL, too, but we had to change a few
things:

1. The GPL is not specific to a product but the MPL says "Mozilla" everywhere.
We had to replace that with "AROS".

2. There is a "bug" in the MPL. We originally thought that any extensions
to the code under the MPL need not be MPL but that the *interface* between
the MPL-code and the extension needs to be under the MPL.

This doesn't seem to be the case. In the end, someone could add an new interface
somewhere, hide the code under a non-MPL license and then publish that as
a new program. The code of the interface must be available under the MPL but
this someone doesn't need to document the new API which then creates the
problem to developing a compatible OSS solution in the original code.

Therefore, we modified this paragraph:

    3.3. Description of Modifications. 
    You must cause all Covered Code to which You contribute to contain a file
    documenting the changes You made to create that Covered Code and the date
    of any change. You must include a prominent statement that the Modification
    is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original Code provided by the
    Initial Developer and including the name of the Initial Developer in (a)
    the Source Code, and (b) in any notice in an Executable version or related
    documentation in which You describe the origin or ownership of the Covered
    Code. 

You can find the whole license at http://www.aros.org/license.html

Also, from my experience with this matter:

1. A *small* (1-4) number of people should learn about these matters
and then make a decision. In our project, we wasted a lot of time
because every now and then, a developer (sensing that this was an
important issue) would step into the discussion the raise a point
which was discussed ages ago :-(

2. Consult a lawyer. Get some basic knowledge about the laws which
govern licenses and what the terms mean. It's also no bad idea to
have a look at how other countries do it. The US aren't the world
and Europe has a different view on many things. For example, the
term "distributed on an "AS IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF 
ANY KIND" probably wouldn't hold in a German court - when you
distribute anything, you must make sure as good as you can that no
one is harmed by it.

Of course, this a very soft area. Even if you deliberately wrote
code which destroys data, it would be hard to prove that in court.

Hope this helps,

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