From: Randy Kramer <rhkramer@...>
Date: 2007-10-15T01:41:38+09:00
Subject: Re: MIT vs. Ruby/GPL License

On Sunday 14 October 2007 12:17 pm, Trans wrote:
> 
> On Oct 14, 8:29 am, Randy Kramer <rhkra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sunday 14 October 2007 09:31 am, Trans wrote:
> I've been using the Ruby license. But everything I've done until now
> has been purely open. That's about to change though, so the question
> becomes a more important one.

Thanks!

I should point out that *after* I pressed send, I read the page that I 
referred you to (and some pages linked from that page) a little more 
carefully (they seem to be pages I hadn't seen before--I guess it's been 
fairly a long time since I dug into this stuff), and realize that some of my 
previous statements were not accurate.

The first being that Richard Stallman *does* consider some licenses without 
copyleft to be free.  If I recognize others as I reread what I wrote, I'll 
try to point them out.

> So MIT is more akin to BSD --less restrictive.

That is my belief, but I should admit that I haven't had much exposure to the 
MIT license.

> > At most, this is just a start.  Do some reading and ask some questions.
> 
> Very helpful thank you. For the moment I will hone in on one question:

You're welcome!  (But after my further reading, I'm beginning to believe I 
should have let somebody else dip their foot in the water first.  ;-)

> If a gem is released under GPL and your app depends on it, does that
> mean your source must also be freely available in a way compatible to
> the GPL? If not, then what about if you drop the same library into
> your vendor/ directory and redistribute it along with your app?

I don't think I can give an instant (correct ;-) answer to that.  I'd suggest 
you look for and read up on the LGPL--it was originally intended to stand for 
the Library GPL, but has since been changed to stand for the Lesser GPL, but 
its focus is on issues related to your concern.

Good luck!

Randy Kramer