Open Source License Question

[Dan Perl]

Following a link in the article that I was pointing to, I found yet another 
interesting article.  See especially the "Choosing a License" section in 
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/perens.html.  I didn't know 
about the X license before, but it sounds intriguing.  Michael, you may be 
interested in that or in LGPL.

Dan

"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.  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.
>
> 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'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
>
>