Re: licensing issues

At 08:18 PM 1/5/01 +0000, John van V wrote:

>I am supporting regular GNU licensing to relieve the pain I am hearing 
>about in the commercial zone where folks are allegedly up to NG.

People who are going to steal the source will do so regardless of the 
license on the source, and the people who are going to respect the license 
will do so regardless of which it is. GPL won't help, and in some ways GPL 
only will hurt, given that it's neither been tested in court, nor is it 
particularly well-regarded by a number of the legal folks that have looked 
at it.

>Also if we use the GNU license, then we dont have to worry about 
>applications meant for perl being written in some other less appropriate
>language because of licensing issues.

No matter which license we choose, people will have an issue with it.

Honestly, the license we choose will only restrict those people who will 
respect it, either for moral or legal reasons. That's one reason to choose 
a license that places the fewest restrictions on those people, and the GPL 
is not that license.


					Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
[email protected]                         have teddy bears and even
                                      teddy bears get drunk