Open Source License Question

[Michael Foord]

"Dan Perl" <danperl at rogers.com> wrote in message news:<97-dnSRAYPEwPuLcRVn-rA at rogers.com>...
> Michael, I have one comment in-line (see below), but other than that I can 
> only say that I chose GPL for my own project.  It may discourage use of my 
> code for commercial purposes but it might even be pretentious to expect that 
> something like that would ever happen.  

A lot of people use python as part of their job and are active
participants in teh python community. A lot of what I write are
library modules to do a particular job. Using the GPL means someone is
unable to use your work in a business setting. i don't expect other
people to sell products containing my work - but neither do I want to
prevent them from being able to use it.

> On the other hand, I was more 
> interested in the advantages of open-source and I wanted to enforce that as 
> much as possible.  I did some research of my own at the time (recently, 
> actually) but I didn't go much into details and I didn't study other 
> licenses in detail either, but I chose GPL in large part because it is the 
> most widely used.
> 
> I tried to find some of the web pages that I read when I was doing my 
> research but I couldn't.  However, I stumbled upon an article that I didn't 
> see before and that is very much in line with my thoughts.  Here's a link: 
> http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html.

Sure - if I allow my work to be relicensed then it will be GPL
compatible. I don't like the GPL itself.

> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> Dan
> 
> "Michael Foord" <fuzzyman at gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:6f402501.0410270331.6f0d5fd6 at posting.google.com...
> > I'd like to formalise slightly the license I release my projects
> > under. At the moment it's 'free to use, modify, distribute and
> > relicense'. This is basically fine as I don't want t oprevent people
> > using my work in commercial settings - but I would like to retain the
> > right to be identified as the author. I'd also like to prevent people
> > selling derivative works where my stuff forms the substantial part of
> > the poduct.
> 
> Michael, I think it's going to be hard to get what you want.  I don't see 
> how you can give a lot of freedom ("I don't want to prevent people using my 
> work in commercial settings") and, at the same time, achieve something like 
> "to prevent people selling derivative works where my stuff forms the 
> substantial part of the poduct".  I'm no lawyer, but I don't think you can 
> define in a license what is a "substantial part of the product".
> 

I've done some legal training - English law can be reasonably sensible
when it comes to definitions of words. You could even pin it down to
something as specific as 'more than 30% of the lines of source code'.
In programming terms it's a meaningless measure - but you have to
start somewhere. I don't think I can afford to sue anyone
anyway...........

Regards,


Fuzzy


> > I'd prefer to use an OSI approved license - but it's not essential.
> > I've been browsing through them and I can't quite see any that
> > *exactly* fits the bill. Before I draft my own I wondered if anyone
> > had a reccomendation.
> >
> > I don't need to require people to make a list of amendments if they
> > change things. This puts the Python license out. I also don't mind
> > people relicensing derivative works - a simple thanks in the
> > documentation and a link to the homepage is my basic requirement.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Fuzzy
> > http://www.voidspace.org.uk/atlantibots/pythonutils.html