discuss: Request for wxWindows License approval

[Julian Smart]

[ please discuss this license. -russ ]

Dear OSI,

The wxWindows development team would be very grateful
if you could consider the wxWindows license for OSI approval,
to allow wxWindows to be OSI-certified.

The current license is L-GPL plus an exception clause
that can be summarised:

   "The exception is that you may use, copy, link, modify and distribute
   under the user's own terms, binary object code versions of works based
   on the Library."

The full wxWindows license can be found here:

http://www.wxwindows.org/newlicen.htm

The most similar OSI-approved license would therefore
be L-GPL.

It is intended to be GPL-compatible (and has been verified as such
by Richard Stallman) but also makes it clear that commercial use is fine.

We have discussed changing the license to a simpler form,
such as the new BSD license, but at least one of our major
copyright holders is firmly against this because of the freedom
to make commercial versions of the library without contributing
back to the open source version. We also take into account
the problem of contacting all the copyright holders in order
to make this change.

I am happy for my name and email address to be circulated
as part of any discussion.

Many thanks in advance, and please let me know if I can
provide further information.

Best regards,

Julian Smart
(wxWindows project founder)

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