Zeo Developer Terms of Use

[David Woolley]

Chad Joan wrote:
> 

> I can own the copyright in all of the GPL code in the sense that I don't 
> intend to try and (re)license Zeo's code under GPL; I'd only be GPL'ing 
> the code that I write. 

One of the key philosophies behind the GPL is that you should be able to 
  re-purpose the code from other projects.  Therefore there is a general 
presumption that a GPLed program will contain code that was derived from 
other GPLed programs. This is no longer possible if you need to have a 
dispensation for linking with a non-GPL code. (On the other hand, other 
people can still re-purpose your code, as long as they either use it 
under the terms of your dispensation, or use it in a pure GPL environment.)

> 
> The other way I could take "own the copyright in all the GPL code" would 
> be to mean that I can't have other contributors that share in copyright 
> ownership for the GPL (as in not Zeo's) code.  That would be 
> unfortunate.  Say it ain't so!

Any other contributors would have to contribute under a compatible 
licence.  That licence could not be the unqualified GPL.  That means 
that any contributor would need to be aware that they were contributing, 
whereas, in a pure GPL environment, you could take contributions from 
people who didn't know they were contributing.  Alternatively, they 
could assign copyright to you.
> 
> What is a dispensation?  Searching around tells me that it's making an 
> exemption to some part of the license, but I'm not sure what I'd be 
> exempting. 

You would have to give explicit permission to do anything that would not 
be permitted by the GPL, in relation to the code.  That would definitely 
include linking with the library, it might also include other things. Be 
careful to ensure that the dispensation has restrictions on it, which 
match the restrictions on the original Zeo licence.  You cannot put 
restrictions on the GPL, but should be able to put restrictions on your 
additional permissions, as people can remove the additional permissions, 
and still have full GPL rights.

Note, be careful that you don't end up violating the third party 
licence, e.g. if using the library requires copying boiler plate code 
which is not trivial and obvious, your source code may be a derivative 
work of the library, in which case it will not be possible to use even a 
GPL with dispensations for it.

The binary will be a derivative work, you will not be able to distribute 
the binary under an extended GPL, because of the "no reverse 
engineering" clause.  That's certainly true if you static link.  It may 
be true for dynamic linking, if the FSF's view is upheld.  If you could 
dynamic link, you would be supplying an aggregation, only parts of which 
were under the extended GPL.


-- 
David Woolley
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