Motivation for Sleepycat + MIT hybrid

Matthew Flaschen matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu
Wed Apr 11 20:12:58 UTC 2007


Suraj N. Kurapati wrote:
> I had been using the GPL for some years without fully understanding
> its implications.

I encourage you to research the license and reconsider using it.  The
FSF has a comprehensive FAQ at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html.

 Recently, I spent some time thinking about my
> ethical beliefs regarding free software and discovered that I prefer
> something like Creative Commons' by-sa (attribution + share-alike)
> license.

Of course, that is similar to the GPL, except the GPL provides better
for software by dealing with source code availability and other issues.

> Since CC does not recommend using their licenses for software

No, in fact they recommend the GPL and LGPL
(http://creativecommons.org/software/) for this.

> 1. too strong: I just want to free my source code; I don't want to
> impose this condition on the user's own source code.

As Andrew stated, this is the purpose of the LGPL.

> I looked at other by-sa licenses (particularly MPL, CDDL, CPL, EPL)
> but found them to be lengthy and having much legalese.

There's a reason for this legalese.  All of these are still far shorter
than proprietary software EULAs people agree to every day.  Many
contracts are still longer.

> I don't want to fuel license proliferation, but I don't seem to have
> very much choice -- my particular ethical beliefs are very unpopular
> in terms of the available OSS licenses.

That's really not true.  I believe LGPL or an MPL-style license could
serve you very well.  And unfortunately, everyone believes they have a
compelling reason for a new license, but OSI needs to say no sometimes.

> Nevertheless, my software is insignificant, so I don't expect this
> license to have any meaningful effect on license proliferation.

It is undesirable to have rarely used licenses, since they clutter the
license list and cause confusion.

> I feel the LGPL is too restrictive because LGPL code can only be
> incorporated into LGPL or GPL code.

That is incorrect.  It can be linked into any program (even proprietary
ones), as long as the program's license allows private modification
(however, source need not be provided) and reverse engineering for
debugging those modifications.  Please read LGPL section 6
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html).

Matthew Flaschen



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