From: Richard Stallman <rms@...>
Date: 2001-03-13T03:00:44+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:12517] Re: Licensing, Intellectual Property, and Ruby code (longish)

It is very important to specify a clear license policy for the library
of modules, and very important to think carefully about what the
policy should be.

It can be advantageous to use a lax license (such as the revised BSD
license or the Ruby license) for very basic general facilities, but
when it comes to more specific packages, it would be best to use the
GPL for them, so as to use their leverage to obtain more free
software.  So I would suggest a two-level policy distinguishing
between very basic general facilities and other modules.


If the main Ruby developers are reading this, could you show me 
your version of the Artistic License?  It would be good to make
sure your version of it is GPL-compatible.  The version used in Perl 5
is not GPL-compatible, and not even clearly a free software license,
but small changes make it both.