Initial Developer's Public License

[Ann W. Harrison]

At 04:29 PM 2/11/2004, Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:

>For one, the OSD allows private modifications.

As do the MPL and the IDPL.  I should have been more clear -
there was no intention to restrict private use of the code.

>The OSL requires publication of modified
>source code when the derivative work is distributed.

Sorry, I was too quick in responding to Ian and confused
the OSL with the BSD/MIT style licenses.  Our intention
is to allow pieces of our code to be included in products
that are not released under any open source license,
provided that interfaces between our code and the closed
source code be published.

Here are two examples that I think would not be allowed
under OSL which are allowed under IDPL.

A commercial database repair tool that uses the on disk
structure definitions, compression/decompression routines
and other parts of the Firebird database code.  The repair
tool combines that code with proprietary code to discover
and repairs corruption.  Developers of such a tool would
publish the interfaces between the Firebird code and their
own code, but would not be compelled to release their
product under an open source license.

A package for automatically compressing the stored format
of the database.  The actual compression code could remain
proprietary.  The developer could sell "Firebird in half
the space".  However the interfaces to the compression
code would be published under the IDPL, allowing others
to create plug-replaceable compression packages.




Regards,

Ann
www.ibphoenix.com


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