OK,

Since there seems to be some appetite for a user-contributed
auto-configuration tool, let's start the discussion by asking for pros and
cons of the various open source licensing models. I have no preference. I
just don't want to get into trouble. )

I'd appreciate some input from the IIUG and IBM on this one as well, please.

--
Bye now,
Obnoxio

"I'm astonished anyone pays real money for this crap."
-- Cosmo

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Obnoxio The Clown wrote:
> OK,
>
> Since there seems to be some appetite for a user-contributed
> auto-configuration tool, let's start the discussion by asking for pros and
> cons of the various open source licensing models. I have no preference. I
> just don't want to get into trouble. )
>
> I'd appreciate some input from the IIUG and IBM on this one as well, please.
>

I prefer the least restrictive licensing possible. My own stuff just
basically says: Do whatever you want with this except sell it for money.

To me that doesn't even preclude IBM including it in their product
distributions as a freebee as long as my copyright is maintained in the
source and binaries.

Art S. Kagel

You could probably find out which GPL License Linus Torvalds is using and use that one. He didn't like the latest one, I think it's GPL3, so whatever one he likes which I think is GPL2, and that would probably be good. Maybe somebody else knows better...

-t-

Obnoxio The Clown wrote:
> OK,
>
> Since there seems to be some appetite for a user-contributed
> auto-configuration tool, let's start the discussion by asking for pros and
> cons of the various open source licensing models. I have no preference. I
> just don't want to get into trouble. )
>
> I'd appreciate some input from the IIUG and IBM on this one as well, please.
>

Obnoxio The Clown wrote:
> Since there seems to be some appetite for a user-contributed
> auto-configuration tool, let's start the discussion by asking for pros and
> cons of the various open source licensing models. I have no preference. I
> just don't want to get into trouble. )
>
> I'd appreciate some input from the IIUG and IBM on this one as well, please.

GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 is still their current
licence - it has many merits. GPL version 3 is still under development;
you can find out lots more from http://gplv3.fsf.org/. At the moment,
Linus is not in favour of it. I reserve judgement until it is finalized
and analyzed; SQLCMD is released explicitly under GPL version 2, without
the 'or any later version' option.

The BSD or X licences let anyone do pretty much anything with the code
(except claim that they wrote it). If you use the BSD licence, choose
the variant without the advertising clause.

All the recognized Open Source licences are available for perusal at
http://www.opensource.org/, along with the definition of what it takes
for a license to be considered open source. Most of the licences are
rather specialized, and probably should not be used - any more than you
should develop your own licence. If you choose one of the alternatives,
consider the Academic Free License, the Open Software License, or
possibly the GNU LGPL (Lesser General Public License).

--
Jonathan Leffler #include <disclaimer.h>
Email: jleffler@earthlink.net, jleffler@us.ibm.com
Guardian of DBD::Informix v2005.02 -- http://dbi.perl.org/