New license - please comment

[Mark Rafn]

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, Christophe Dupre wrote:

> 2(a) in our draft has the same purpose as the LGPL : it is for licensing
> libraries that must be usable with commercial software (or at least linked
> with non-free libraries and programs).

An important distinction is that the LGPL grants permissions IN ADDITION
to those granted by the GPL.  It is not JUST for licensing libraries that 
can be linked to non-free programs, it is for doing that in addition to 
being free software itself.

> - Library must be usable in any program, no matter its licensing.

LGPL covers this.

> - Use of library must not mandate releasing proprietary code, as long as
> no change is made to the library.

LGPL covers this.

> - Fixes and enhancements made by 3rd party should be incorporated in the
> main line of the library.

IMO, this should be up to the 3rd party.  Requiring such a grant of 
copyright as a consideration for the ability to modify the software is not 
free, IMO.  Requesting it (and making it clear that patches explicitly 
submitted to you imply this) is fine.

> - Rensselaer must able to give commercial entited licenses to
> commercialise (or make commercial products based on parts of the library)
> without being subject to this license.

You're already not subject to the license on code you own.  This seems to 
be covered by the previous requirement.

> The last point is the reason of 2(d). While it is true that we could
> simply refuse code from parties unwilling to give us co-ownership (or
> license) their modifications

This is the approach taken by many open-source projects, and one I
heartily recommend.

> Also, asking each 3rd party providing a patch to sign a document is
> tedious are requires non-trivial record keeping. We think this is a way
> to avoid that.

If you don't need a signed document in your proposed license, why would
you need one for the voluntary assignment?

I wonder if you can use the LGPL verbatim, and include a seperate notice
that says "Any patches or changes sent to "foo at rpi.edu" are assumed to be
intended for inclusion in the main program, and by submitting such a
change you assign the copyright to RPI.
--
Mark Rafn    dagon at dagon.net    <http://www.dagon.net/>  
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