Re: [Fresco-devel] Re: Cross-platformability

On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 01:12:46AM -0700, M. Evans wrote:
> > [snip]
> > Even the idealized world postulated by LGPL doesn't work out.
> > Assume an ideal businessman really wants to help the LGPL project.
> > So he submits all his modifications back to the project.  There is
> > still a potential headache.  What if the project *rejects* his
> > changes?  Now, the businessman is under obligation to create his *own*
> > mechanism for source code distribution!  He must offer end users
> > a means to re-link the application using his particular variant of
> > the LGPL code.  He must offer source code to his version of the LGPL
> > library.  It all gets very sticky.
> 
> I think this argument is confused.  Fresco isn't a widget library;
> Fresco is a windowing system.  It's like you're arguing that
> businesspeople cannot write applications for X (or for MS Windows, for
> that matter), because the reality of business code is that it almost
> always requires modifications to the X server or xlib, except in the
> case of X this is okay, because the business can ship binary only X
> servers that can run their application...


If you want an open license written by lawyers, I suggest the CPL
from IBM.  IBM has lots of lawyers, and I'm sure they would "get
things right."

 http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-cplfaq.html

(Got link from the Eclipse FAQ page: http://www.eclipse.org/legal/main.html )


I'm not saying change Fresco, but that here is what lawyers come
up with for a public license.  OpenOffice.org has something similar.
Yes, commercial businesses _do_ want to contribute.  They also want
to feel safe and protected.


The X Consortium license isn't a good starting place, IMHO.  
Anyone remember the XFree86 project declaring a branch from their
code base...?

========================

The topic of licensing using an "GPL" style license comes up
kinda reguarly on various mailing lists.  Is there a newsgroup
or ML where things can be dicussed?  Maybe a few wannabe lawyers
hanging out rendering a legal prespective?


---------------------------------------------------------------------
brian witt    Railroads, computers, sailboats, etc.   [email protected]