RE: [ba-ohs-talk] Ideagraph 0.5 release (+source)
At 06:22 PM 12/20/2002 +0100, Danny Ayers wrote:
>But some kind of
>cover is needed to help prevent simple rebranding/reselling, or the
>production of something in the same space that appeared as a competitive
>(possibly free) alternative. (01)
Danny, I understand this issue well. Perhaps I don't understand it well
enough to analyze it in the context(s) it should be taken in, but I think
that you, along with most other "hackers" who participate here, know fully
well that there are more than enough open source libraries 'out there'
that, whatever we do, it won't be all that hard for others to do it as well. (02)
With that consideration (perhaps alone) in mind, I tend to shy away from
notions of particular "not open source" licensing schemes (e.g. the Apple
Public Source License). Johnathan Cheyer gave a particularly lucid
articulation about why he chose GPL and there may actually be some merit in
using that license if it is your desire to be "open source" but, at the
same time, prevent commercial ripoffs of your intellectual
property. Commercial ripoffs have never been my concern (though they do
lurk at the edges of reality for me), so I stay away from GPL and now
prefer the Jabber Open Source License because it goes beyond BSD in that it
requires that you put back your improvements, bug fixes and so forth (but
not necessarily your extensions), and it terminates your rights if you make
any patent claims on users of the software. (03)
Couple of EUROs for the day.
Cheers
Jack (04)
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