[ruby-talk:12662] Re: Licensing, Intellectual Property, and Ruby code (longish)

>===== Original Message From "Colin Sampaleanu" <[e-mail]> =====
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Benjamin J. Tilly [mailto:[e-mail]]
[...]
>> Therefore I think it is important that they be usable within
>> GPLed software, but I do not think that it is necessary that
>> there be undue pressure to go GPL only.  OTOH it may be
>> sufficient to require that all software on the RAA be under
>> GPL compatible licensing terms.  That is loose enough to be
>> usable under a wide range of situations, but it makes the
>> rights clear enough that people will be free to cut the
>> archive to CD, know that they can always combine components,
>> etc.
>
>I have to agree. I'm not trying to start another license debate, and I stand
>by anybody's right to put whatever license they wish to on their code; for a
>number of reasons including the selfish one that open source of any kind,
>even GPL, is better than no source at all. However I think a lot of the time
>putting the GPL on a piece of code is equivalent to the 'kiss of death'
>w/regards to a good portion of its potential users ever using or (perhaps
>even more importantly) contributing to and growing the code. Almost anybody
>working in a typical corporate or commercial environment simply can not
>touch GPLed code due to its viral nature. I have followed a number of Apache

Sorry, this appears to be a misunderstanding on your part of
what the GPL is and how it works.  If you are using the
software internally you can do whatever you want with it.
If you don't plan to contribute or distribute, there are no
restrictions on running it.  And corporate developers are
free to contribute in their own time.

Most corporate programmers do not distribute their software
externally, and therefore the GPL is essentially irrelevant
for them.

>projects (the Apache license is pretty open, similar to BSD), and
>contributed to a smaller extent with comments and patches, and have noticed
>that a significant amount of work is done by people in a
>commercial/corporate environment. Can a commercial entity benefit unfairly
>from free source? Sure, I suppose. Is it still on the other hand in their
>best interest to contribute to growing open-source projects they have an
>interest in? Absolutely, and at least a certain portion do. Another option
>is the middle ground licenses that try to force release of modified code,
>but not using code...

I have seen plenty contributed to GPLed projects from people
in corporate/commercial environments.  And a lot of companies
who wrote their own licenses have gone seriously out of their
way to ensure that their licenses are GPL compatible.

>As it is, the fact that base Ruby itself has some GPL-only pieces (as far as
>I can tell, I am talking about things like getoptlong), are somewhat
>worrying. It means that someone can not bundle Ruby in some code that
>depends on it, without worrying about license implications. Asking a
>neophyte to install Ruby themselves (w/necessary addons) instead of doing an
>install for them is not always realistic), never mind the embedding
>situation.

Ruby's license claims that there is no code that is GPL only.
Most of it is dual-licensed a modified Artistic + GPL.  The
RE engine is LGPL.  All of that can be embedded within an
application.

Also note that a not inconsiderable number of developers
prefer the GPL.  Relatively few projects have succeeded in
attracting both people who like BSD type licenses and people
who like the GPL approach.  Perl is one.  I have reason to
hope that Ruby will be another.  Succeeding in that means
avoiding evangelizing either.

It is possible.  I would like to see it happen again.

Cheers,
Ben