Open Source Licence (LGPL or GPL)

[Richard Gaskin]

Scott Raney wrote:

> A couple of points on the license-type debate:
> 1) We don't really care what license you use: anything from public domain
> (least restrictive) to Artistic License (what PERL uses) to GPL (most
> restrictive) would be fine.
> 2) A concern with using GPL is that anything moved into your application
> with the "Resource Mover" results in some of the virus-like aspects of GPL
> kicking it (i.e., you'd be required to release a version of your app without
> those stacks so the end-user could replace them).  This makes LGPL a better
> bet, if something even this restrictive is desired.

If Scott's not interested in picking a license I'm inclined to advocate
public domain.

Anything I would contribute to the IDE is fair game for fair use anyway, but
like many of us I need to ensure that any parts of MC that I include in my
products or client work does not invalidate any proprietary copyright
considerations for the larger commercial work.

Maybe the LGPL will cover us, maybe it'll cover Rev if they choose to use
any of it, maybe, maybe, maybe....

I like the virally-enforced freedom of GPL, if for no other reason than the
beautiful irony of seeing "enforced" and "freedom" side by side.  ;)  But
free-as-in-speech-and-beer software isn't central to my personal mission in
life.  If it's important for the Free Software Foundation, maybe they could
provide us with legal counsel to sort this out and ensure Rev's legal
defense if they borrow three lines from something in the MC IDE and some
nutcase decides to sue to "free" the engine.  That's a "freedom" I can live
without.  Even if such a case were found to be wholly without merit, as they
say, it would be a distraction from meaningful work.  To my knowledge there
has not yet been any defining precedent set by a US court for GPL
enforcement one way or another.

Rather than spend too much time exploring options to protect a copyright
holder who expresses no interest in such protection, it seems public domain
is the most free of free software options; free as in speech, beer, and
guacamole.

Any reasons not to?

Also - SourceGorge doesn't deem common FTP to be worthy, requiring CVS. Ugh.
Anyone know a good CVS client for OS X?

Or maybe we've been thinking too hard about all of this, including
SourceForge.  After all, just how much respect do we expect to earn from
that community by posting a bunch of stuff we might call "open source"
that's in a proprietary format and requires a proprietary 4GL to open?

So if not for the community, then for the tools?  How many of us have (and
like) CVS tools?  I'd love to be able to transfer stuff in MC natively,
which can be done with FTP today.

And if not the best fit for its commnunity or the tools, are we really just
looking for neutral Web hosting?

And all the while as we continue to ponder the various options for all this
without a single line of code written, a bunch of smart folks have set up
the Revolution_IPC group at Yahoo and have been sharing and updating a
number of useful libraries for months, no fuss no muss.

This is all so not about code.... ::sigh:::

Here's today's moment of Zen:

Most of us already have some tweaked form of the MC IDE on our drives right
now and we're happy.  Is there significant benefit to pooling our collective
resources to maintain something that Rev is already obligated not to break?

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
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