License Committee Report for September 2009

[Giancarlo Niccolai]

In data lunedì 16 novembre 2009 18:51:09, hai scritto:
> Giancarlo,
> 
> I have re-read the Falcon license. The license itself seems more clear
> than the commentary. But it does seem to do approximately what the LGPL
> does, with the addition of a weak provision for user-readable
> attribution which doesn't seem to reliably do what you think it does.
> The producer of a content management system that embeds Falcon might be
> required to place a mention of Falcon in its documentation before
> distributing it, but the creator of a web site would not be required to
> mention Falcon to protect his scripts because scripts for interpretation
> by Falcon can't be considered to be derivative works of Falcon.
> 

I didn't think a so simple concept was so hard to make it to pass through. The 
aim of FPLL is not that of adding a badgeware on top of LGPL. Is that of LOOSE 
excessive constraints that GPL and LGPL require and that are NOT ACCEPTABLE 
for vast part of our audience, without giving away every right (of the 
developers and of the users).


> So, the effect isn't really much greater than that of the straight LGPL,

In fact, it aims to be less. LGPL is too much restrictive for some of our 
audience and wont' be accepted.

> which requires distribution of the license statement with the product
> and the source code of the LGPL components on request, so anyone who
> recieved the distribution would know that Falcon was in the product if
> you used the LGPL.
> 
> The license currently falls short of "badgeware" licenses which require
> a logo on every web page. 

It doesn't even want to try. If your product is open source, there is no 
further requirement.

OTOH, I invite you to list the programming languages (or more specifically, the 
embeddable programming languages) which are distributed as straight LGPL or 
GPL with no exceptions or no dual licensing.

Bests,
Giancarlo Niccolai.