[M3devel] Licenses and copyright ownership

[Hendrik Boom]

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 07:55:09PM +0000, Jay K wrote:
> Use a "BSD" or "MIT" license.

I believe those don't place restrictions on what other code you can 
link with.

 Maybe LGPL.

LGPL does place some restrictions on linking, but they're not as
severe as GPL.

> Don't use Apache 2.0 or Mozilla.

"Public domain" might seem to be an option, except that

(1) It doesn't count as a license; instead, it means tht no license is 
needed,

and

(2) Some countries in the world don't recognise it, leaving your users 
there in legal limbo.

> Don't make up your own. OpenBSD folks reject such things as not worth the (lawyer) time to understand.> OpenBSD folks reject the Apache 2.0 license for some reaosn -- maybe the previous, it is long and custom.
> Best is modern BSD, which some years ago dropped a clause from the old BSD license.
> See OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and NetBSD.

For an introduction to dual-licensing, please see the Wikipedia 
article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-licensing
Especially the section on License Compatibility, which is our concern 
here.

> 
>  - Jay
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------
> > Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 14:36:21 -0500
> > From: rodney_bates at lcwb.coop
> > To: m3devel at elegosoft.com
> > Subject: Re: [M3devel] Licenses and copyright ownership
> >
> >
> >
> > On 10/16/2013 02:11 PM, Tony Hosking wrote:
> >> I think GPL is inherently incompatible with the original DEC/SRC license.
> >
> > So what do you propose instead?
> >
> >>
> >> Antony Hosking | Associate Professor | Computer Science | Purdue University
> >> 305 N. University Street | West Lafayette | IN 47907 | USA
> >> Mobile +1 765 427 5484
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Oct 16, 2013, at 3:05 PM, "Rodney M. Bates" <rodney_bates at lcwb.coop> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I have checked in a few written-from-scratch source files without copyright/license
> >>> notices recently. I plan to fix this, but wonder if there is a consensus about
> >>> the choices here. We already have a hodge-podge of copyright owners and licenses
> >>> in the Modula-3 repository. That may be difficult or impossible to fix, but I
> >>> would like to move things in the right direction when adding all-new code.
> >>>
> >>> I checked in some earlier ones naming myself as owner and GPL as license.
> >>> But I recall reading some hints on this list suggesting that people felt
> >>> that the GPL was not a good idea here.
> >>>
> >>> Also, is there any organization that would be good to take ownership where
> >>> possible, in order to get Modula-3 more consistent in this regard?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >