[OT] open-source license issues

[Russel Winder]

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.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
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