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Re: [OT] Free licenses, possibly viral?

On Wednesday, August 27, 2003, at 08:17 AM, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

At 8:29 AM -0400 8/27/03, Ruffin Bailey wrote:

I do not feel, however, that if I use your library in my app, that I should be forced to open source the whole lot of what I've been doing. Then I'm giving away time, and therefore dollars, to anyone who can request source and has the savvy to make a build. I and the companies I work for don't have that luxury, nor should you have to if you prefer to be the sole seller of novel software you created *that doesn't need servicing*.

In other words, you are not willing to agree to the license terms under which they have published their library.

True - it was disagreement with those terms and a search for a license that allowed usage of a library (possibly with modified source distribution) that started this thread.

But I get really peeved when people tell me that they think *my* code should be free, but *their* code shouldn't be. The GPL is scrupulously fair and equal. if you don't want to play by the GPL rules, don't use GPL software.

That was how this started - an author was seeking a license that allowed others to use his library without forcing user code to become GPL. To recap, at least one interpretation of the GPL says that Java code can not fall under the dylib provision, and thus the license is more aggressive than many on this list can use. This does not mean that users get to steal it, just that the license provisions rule out GPL libs for certain uses, and the author of the original library wanted both clarification and a license without that encumbrance.

For what it is worth, I would like such a license as well, as much of what I do for clients cannot be open sourced, but any mods to the OS libraries it depends on can and should be folded back into the main tree. I am willing to write such into my contracts, and clients go along with it where they would not go along with "everything I do for you is OS and GPL".

Python and Perl both have such clauses, so I use a lot of Python.

Scott
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 >Re: [OT] Free licenses, possibly viral? (From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <email@hidden>)



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