Z80 Emulation Engine

[Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 02:41:49 -0400, Manu via Digitalmars-d-announce  
<digitalmars-d-announce at puremagic.com> wrote:

> On 22 April 2014 16:29, Jacob Carlborg via Digitalmars-d-announce
> <digitalmars-d-announce at puremagic.com> wrote:
>> On 22/04/14 07:57, Manu via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, I understand the license options essentially, but it's more than
>>> just the license text, there are license cultures that affect the
>>> decision, and people are borderline religious about this sort of
>>> thing.
>>> I mean, the GPL seems fine to me, but there are many people who see
>>> GPL and avoid it like the plague as a matter of superstition or
>>> something. I'd prefer to not discourage interest or contribution just
>>> because I wrote "GPL" near my code.
>>> Then people invented LGPL and in my experience, this makes some of
>>> them feel okay with it, and others still don't wanna go near it.
>>>
>>> What practical reasons are there to avoid GPL if your software is
>>> fundamentally open-source?
>>> Ideally, I'd like something like GPL, with the option that I can grant
>>> someone an exception to the license upon request.
>>
>>
>> If you want to use some library that is not GPL, or incompatible with  
>> GPL.
>> Or the opposite. If someone wants to use your code, but not want to use  
>> GPL,
>> but still an open source license. BSD, for example, is much more  
>> flexible in
>> these cases.
>
> But then you lose the incentive to return contribution back to the
> original community.

I think you're confusing incentive with enforcement.

But enforcement of keeping sources open is not what GPL does, GPL forces  
you to open YOUR sources. It's the opposite of incentive, it's a  
disincentive. I don't know any for-pay developer that would prefer GPL  
over a less restrictive license.

> I've worked in companies where we take OSS libraries, modified for our
> needs, and never offer the modifications back to the community. I've
> done it myself, and it's basically wrong.

I disagree. There are cases where your changes are not relevant to the  
community. There are cases where the code is hacky, and you don't really  
want to support it (as some open source projects require), or follow the  
community guidelines for coding or documentation.

> I am not aware of the license that encourages community contribution,
> but also doesn't infect your code like the plague?

By definition, open source encourages community contribution. ANY open  
source license encourages this. As ANYONE who has used OSS for their  
binary-only distribution, had to modify it, and then had to maintain their  
changes internally as bugs were released on the community version, it does  
not pay off. There is no good reason to withhold changes to the OSS  
itself, and almost anyone would MUCH rather prefer to get their changes  
into the main-line and have them maintained by the community!

-Steve