GPL-compatibility and other questions

[Evan Prodromou]

On Mon, 2004-01-11 at 09:07 -0800, Donnal Walter wrote: 
> 1. I am trying to compare licenses. Is there a more up-to-date or
> more official version of the following draft document (found via
> Google), which is now two years old?
> 
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/Licensing-HOWTO.html#choosing

I am pretty sure the answer to this is a resounding "no".

I also think you should look at some other sources for licensing
decision info. I think you'd probably find quite a few people in the
Open Source world who'd question whether the OSL and AFL are the be-all
and end-all of Open Source licensing.

There are a few other good resources for evaluating licenses. The Free
Software Foundation has a list of Various Licenses and Comments about
Them. Larry Rosen has written a book about Open Source Licensing:
Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law . And there's a book from
O'Reilly and Associates called Understanding Open Source and Free
Software Licensing . I think any of these would be a pretty good start. 

> 2. Is OSL 2.1 still considered "incompatible" with Gnu GPL? If so,
> isn't this a liability? I use Python, for example, which went to
> great lengths to make sure their license is GPL-compatible.

It depends on the application. Is it important to you that your code be
miscible with GPL code?

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou                  .O.
http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/       ..O
evan at bad.dynu.ca                OOO