Framework Licensing for Developer Flexibility

[Daniel Carrera]

Hello Randy,

I generally dislike the BSD licenses, since they allow incompatible 
propietary modifications.  If you are not confortable with the LGPL, you 
might want to consider the SISSL (Sun Industry Standard License).

OpenOffice.org is distributed under a dual LGPL/SISSL system:

http://www.openoffice.org/license.html


The SISSL allows the creation of propietary software, much like the BSD, 
but it has a clause that you have to either maintain API compatibility or 
if you break compatibility, publish the new API.

I would feel more confortable with an SISSL license than with a BSD 
because it better prevents the "hijacking" of your work.

You might consider following Sun's approach with a dual LGPL/SISSL 
system.  This allows them to provide a propietary but compatible 
modification to OpenOffice.org (ie. StarOffice) while also providing a 
GPL-compatible license (LGPL) which is something that many developers 
appreciate.

Cheers,
Daniel.


On Sat, Oct 04, 2003 at 01:58:29PM -0400, Randy Pearson wrote:
> 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
> 
> --
> license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3

-- 
Daniel Carrera    | OpenPGP KeyID: 9AF77A88
PhD grad student. | 
Mathematics Dept. | "To understand recursion, you must first
UMD, College Park | understand recursion".
--
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