[OT] open-source license issues

[Fawzi Mohamed]

For my personal libs/programs I fully agree with spir:

1) attribution is a very light burden
2) it is nice, and somehow the right thing to do
3) it gives back at least a bit of advertisement to the stuff *you can  
use freely*

For those reasons I did release blip with an apache 2.0 license, by  
using it I can also easily integrate/use all kinds of free libraries,
but it stays free, and usable also in commercial contexts.

That said I think that having phobos using the Boost license, aside  
form "being nice for the user" it other subtle effects:
yes it makes "standing on the shoulders of giants" more difficult,  
because you cannot as easily use other libraries,
but exactly for that reason it forces one to rebuild things from  
scratch (or almost).
For a *base* library, this is not necessarily a bad thing, it reduces  
dependencies, and might even give code that is more optimized.

I think that there is space in D for other libraries, libraries that  
use licenses like apache 2.0 or BSD.
Still I understand that the base library is boost licensed, it might  
not be my first choice for my own projects (I don't want to always
develop everything from scratch), but it is a clear choice, and a  
choice that has its own merits.

Fawzi

On 12-apr-11, at 15:34, spir wrote:

> On 04/12/2011 11:55 AM, Daniel Gibson wrote:
>> Am 12.04.2011 11:34, schrieb spir:
>>> On 04/12/2011 04:06 AM, Daniel Gibson wrote:
>>>> Well I'd always use PostgreSQL instead of MySQL when having the
>>>> choice, but
>>>> 1. often MySQL needs to be used because it's already there
>>>> 2. PostgreSQL uses the BSD-License which also isn't suitable for  
>>>> Phobos.
>>>>
>>>> BTW: I think PHP has a native SQL driver (under their BSD-style PHP
>>>> license) - maybe that could be adapted to be used with D, if it's
>>>> written in C. This still couldn't be shipped with Phobos, but at  
>>>> least
>>>> there are no stupid restrictions on using it for commercial  
>>>> software.
>>>
>>> I don't understand this story of shipping, neither. It seems to me  
>>> D's
>>> style rather pushes to reuse libs (esp written in C), that users  
>>> (both
>>> programmer&  end-user) are forced to install anyway. Licenses that  
>>> allow
>>> reuse (and shipping) provided a copyright note is properly  
>>> inserted do
>>> not change anything for me.
>>>
>>> Instead, I find this copyright note, not only *extremely* light, but
>>> also fair, and even nice. In my views, people who do not agree  
>>> with that
>>> are the kinds who want to freely take from a community and give  
>>> nothing
>>> back in exchange (rather corporations in fact); not even attribute  
>>> their
>>> work to authors. Bad and sad :-(
>>>
>>> Denis
>>
>> Yeah this is all fine when you use a third-party lib, but IMHO for a
>> standard-lib of a language such a copyright-note shouldn't be  
>> necessary.
>> It's not like you have to know that phobos uses zlib, for example.
>> Sure it's nice if you add to your README "I used the D programming
>> language and it's standardlib Phobos, which includes the zlib I  
>> used for
>> compression and SQLite for simple database stuff to create this",  
>> but it
>> shouldn't be necessary.
>
> Right, I now understand the point. But still find it an extremely  
> light constraint: just put an "attributions.txt" into your package.  
> Compare this constraint eg with makefile issues ;-)
>
> Denis
> -- 
> _________________
> vita es estrany
> spir.wikidot.com
>