Choosing the right license

Mark Hatch mhatch at ics.com
Thu Nov 2 15:23:38 UTC 2000


At 11:05 AM 11/2/2000 +0000, David Johnson wrote:
>On Wednesday 01 November 2000 07:02 pm, Mark Hatch wrote:
>
> > The intention here sounds similar to the Open Motif Public License (sic)
> > and the QPL. The OMPL requires royalties for use on non-"open systems" and
> > the original QPL was open source only for non-commercial uses. The OMPL is
> > *not* an open source license because of this clause. I've heard mixed
> > opinions on the QPL, although I've a hard time understanding how it is
> > different.
>
>This is a mischaracterization of the QPL, probably unintentional.

Unintentional, I must have been thinking about the original QPL.

>The
>original Qt license (The Qt Free Edition License), prohibited commercial use.
>However, the QPL only prohibited closed source and proprietary use. A license

Now I am really confused... OMPL received a lot of grief because it 
prohibited the source from being used on closed source operating systems. 
(Other than that prohibition, OMPL is essentially word-for-word the IBM 
Public License.)

If I understand your comment about the new QPL correctly, it prohibits use 
by closed source applications and proprietary use (I thought that there was 
also some prohibition in QPL on systems that didn't support the X Window 
System  - i.e., Windows?????). So prohibition against closed source 
applications is ok and you can get an open source stamp of approval but 
prohibiting use on a closed source operating system is a no-no?

I am obviously missing the point here!

Regards,

Mark



>cannot be open source if it contains a blanket prohibition against commercial
>use.
>
>--
>David Johnson
>___________________
>http://www.usermode.org

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