[License-discuss] FreeAndFair license

[Lawrence Rosen]

John Cowan wrote:

> (Nowadays this wouldn't be necessary, as there are drop-in replacements for readline, but the principle is still the same.)

 

All copyrighted software can have "drop-in replacements" if someone wants to build them. Only patents may prevent that, but that's not the topic here. 

 

This drop-in alternative is valid even for the open source election software that Brent Turner is concerned about. If someone releases such software under a more restrictive license (such as the FreeAndFair or the OSET licenses), copyright law allows a BSD or GPL alternative to be dropped in (with engineering effort!) to replace it.

 

That's the value of all open source copyright licenses. 

 

So, I still don't understand what role "principle" plays in BSD and GPL dual licensing?

 

/Larry

 

 

From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan at ccil.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2017 11:17 AM
To: Brent Turner <turnerbrentm at gmail.com>
Cc: Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>; license-discuss at opensource.org; Alan Dechert <dechert at gmail.com>; Joe Kiniry <kiniry at freeandfair.us>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FreeAndFair license

 

 

On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 9:12 AM, Brent Turner <turnerbrentm at gmail.com <mailto:turnerbrentm at gmail.com> > wrote:

 

John.  Can you explain why a group such as Oset or FFE would not want to simply use GPL ?

 

I don't know those organizations.  But if you issue software under the GPL, you reduce your market share by people who want to modify it and won't or can't accept the GPL terms, or who just want to use it and are irrationally afraid of or hostile to the GPL.  Likewise, if you issue software on BSD terms, you reduce your market share by people who are irrationally hostile to BSD software, or fear that if a proprietary fork is made it will somehow affect their BSD rights or cut them off from their only available source of improvements.  If you do both, you have some hope of retaining these people who would otherwise be lost.

 

I know of a program which consists of a fairly large library which does most of the work, issued under a permissive license, and a small interactive main program which provides the command line.  This main program is provided in two versions.  One works with GNU readline and is GPLed; the other does not provide line editing and is under the same permissive license as the library.  The author can do this because he is free to violate his own license to create the readline-free version of the code, but users would not be.

 

(Nowadays this wouldn't be necessary, as there are drop-in replacements for readline, but the principle is still the same.)

 

-- 

John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org <mailto:cowan at ccil.org> 

Business before pleasure, if not too bloomering long before.

        --Nicholas van Rijn

 

 

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