NASM Public Licence - What do you guys think?

[David Johnson]

On Mon, 04 Sep 2000, Nelson Rush wrote:
> The following link is for the NASM Licence under which The Netwide Assembler
> is licensed. I'd like to get the opinion of this list on whether it is safe
> to develop under this licence or not?

Hmm, one almost wonders why they didn't just use the GPL for their
license, as the intent seems very close. In any case, I don't like the
stuff about having to inform the authors about various things, like
distributing modified copies, although it does explicitly say that
permission is not needed to do this. Although this part does not go
against the OSD.

I do worry about section X (GNU compliancy). Merely saying "may be
distributed in such a way as to be compliant with the GNU General
Public Licence" might not be good enough.

In any case, if you are looking at this license because it meets your
intentions, then think about using the (L)GPL instead. The only
practical difference between the two is the requirement to notify the
author of inclusion and modification, which the vast majority of
developers do anyway of their own volition. 

-- 
David Johnson
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