Re: Announce: GPL Framework centered on Postgres

Tim Allen wrote:
> Kenneth Downs wrote:
>>>> GPL is to spread it as far and wide as possible as fast as possible.
>>>
>>> LGPL?
>>>
>>> My concern would be, I can't use this toolkit for a closed source
>>> application if it is GPL.
>>>
>>> That may be your intent (which I actually don't have a business
>>> problem with), I was just curious as to your decision.
>>
>> If it turns out that nobody can release a closed source app, I will
>> definitely reconsider and look again at LGPL, but I am not convinced
>> you cannot do so.
>>
>> If you seek to provide a closed source app that is built upon
>> Andromeda, you are required to provide the source code to Andromeda
>> itself.  However, your app is not a derivative work in the strict
>> sense because your code is not mixed in with mine in any sense.  You
>> never modify a file, and your files and mine are actually in separate
>> directories.
>>
>> I greatly appreciate your asking the question though because I'd like
>> to make sure that people feel safe with the project.  My goal is to
>> provide the freedoms typically associated with the "plain old GPL",
>> and certainly not to restrict the creation of closed apps.  I just
>> don't want anybody closing *my* app.
>
> Then it sounds like LGPL is exactly what you want. That forbids people
> closing your code, but allows linking of it to closed apps. Cf Tom's
> comments, it's quite difficult for anyone to release code that depends
> on GPL'd code without incurring the terms of the GPL for their code (and
> that is clearly the way the FSF want it to be).
>
> But as Joshua was implying, a common business model is to release some
> code under GPL, which means it can be used only for GPL'd apps, and then
> also be willing to sell other sorts of licences for it to be used with
> commercial apps. If that's the sort of business model you have in mind,
> then GPL is probably what you want.
>
We've been through similar discussions recently with our web application server,
Whitebeam (http://www.whitebeam.org).

We'd originally released this under a variant of the Mozilla licence - which I
think is not unlike GPL. We started down that route because we make use of
Mozillas JavaScript engine (SpiderMonkey). We did get a number of comments
though, and we never managed to get our licence adopted by the OSS (quite
rightly so!)

The outcome of the discussion was to release the project under a BSD license.

A good deal of the discussion centred around the fact that we make heavy use of
Postgres and so we'd be a much more natural choice of development environment if
we had a similar licence. It helped that the discussions took place during the
uncertaintly around mySQL licensing coupled with Oracles buyout of the innodb
company. The clincher was that Postgres+Whitebeam+Apache (1.3.29 before they
changed their licence) provided a complete BSD based web development
environment. The only external dependancy being SpiderMonkey which we link to
under the LGPL.

My suggestion would be: a) if you want to keep the option of selling/licencing
your code for commercial gain, do something like mySQL and release under GPL
with lots of warnings and offer people a 'commercial' licence; b) if you want to
see your project used in the widest possible audience go with BSD.

The BSD license does allow others to create a closed-source project from your
code - but my view is that isn't too important. You'd be the natural port of
call if they wanted consultancy on how to do that.

Pete
--
http://www.whitebeam.org
http://www.yellowhawk.co.uk
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