Framework Licensing for Developer Flexibility

[Randy Pearson]

Our company has been using a commercial development environment that
provides the infrastructure for developing interactive web applications.
Over several years, we have developed an object-oriented framework that can
be used in conjunction with the commercial product, and greatly enhances
developers' ability to create web applications.

In lieu of attempting to market this framework commercially, we are
seriously considering making it available as open source. I have been
researching for the right license to use, should we decide to do this. Our
goals are:

a) Make the framework itself available to other developers.
b) Encourage contributions to the framework by other developers.
c) (Key) Allow developers (including us) to create web applications that use
the framework, but where the final applications can be *either* open source
*or* proprietary.

We have no experience with creating software licenses of any type, and thus
are looking for advice. Based on our review of open source information we
have found, our preliminary conclusions are:

1. Clearly the GPL is out for several reasons.
2. The LGPL looks closer to what we want, but it is very lengthy compared to
other open source licenses, and it uses technical terms like "linking" and
"executables" that strike me as too specific. (Ex: If you use "late
binding", can you avoid license terms that refer to "linking"?)
3. The Modfied BSD and/or MIT license appear to be the closest to what we
are looking for. 

Thanks in advance for any advice,

-- Randy

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