Re: Request for a license change

From: Murray S. Kucherawy <msk_at_blackops.org>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:28:16 -0700 (PDT)

After a chat this evening with SM on IRC, and summarizing list traffic, I
think I can summarize our positions as follows:

1) We all agree we want to drop the advertising clause from our current
license, as it does us more harm than good. The most obvious alternatives
are 3-clause BSD, 2-clause BSD, or GPL (some version, presumably 2 or 3).

2) We'd all ultimately be fine with a three-clause BSD license.

3) I have some leaning toward GPLv3 because I like the idea of compelling
modifiers to contribute their work back to the community.

4) Dan is comfortable with just about any of the proposed approaches.

5) SM is pretty strongly opposed to the GPL for the usual religious
reasons. :) But to me, one of the compelling points he makes is this:
The GPL establishes a legal obligation (which actually works in Germany at
least!) to contribute modified code back to the community, but the good
guys would do that anyway, and the bad guys will not bother regardless of
which license we choose. It then becomes a question of who will suffer
the enforcement burden if we were to go GPL and discover an infringement.
We're not big enough to afford lawyers, and I don't know that the FSF has
bottomless legal pockets.

Is there any further opinion or dissent to be considered?

-MSK
Received on Fri Mar 19 2010 - 07:28:34 PST