[OT] open-source license issues

[Andrew Wiley]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 1:52 AM, Russel Winder <russel at russel.org.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 19:47 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> [ . . . ]
>>
>> Regardless, I think we've clearly demonstrated the complete impenetrability
>> of (L)GPL. I've long since given up trying to understand it, and I seriously
>> doubt that anyone really truly understands it (it's the C++ of the legal
>> world). Even if you do miraculously understand one form of it, there still
>> probably about 10 other versions and half of them are even incompatible with
>> each other (in poorly-understood ways). The whole thing's just a damn mess.
>> I've always found it best to just avoid any (L)GPL source or library
>> outright. Not worth the trouble.
>
> GPL and LGPL are fine licences.  They only appear impenetrable because
> there is no case law in the USA or UK to define the accepted meaning as
> opposed to the intended meaning.  It may be that in countries that do
> not rely on case law to give meaning to statutes, contracts and licence,
> things are different.
>
> Personally I find licences such as BSD, MIT, ASL, etc. ones to avoid
> since they allow organizations to take software, sell it for profit and
> return absolutely nothing to the development community.  I think LGPL is
> the preferred licence for all non-proprietary software and am very glad
> to find libraries that use it.
>
> Sadly the Java world seems to have slipped from using LGPL to being
> obsessed with using ASL 2.0 and professing hatred of LGPL.  ASL 2.0
> claims to have a patent clause unlike all the other non (L)GPL licences,
> but until this is tested in court so that there is case law no-one, not
> even lawyers, actually know what the licences mean or entail.

The Java world likes ASL precisely because software licensed under it
can be sold. Take a look at the signature lines of the main
contributors to large open source Java projects. It's common for large
companies to pay programmers to develop open source software that's
eventually shipped in products, and at the end of the day, the
community benefits.

Now yes, it's entirely an honor system, and there's certainly a risk
involved, but in general, the ASL has made Java's open source
community grow quite a bit.