From: Paul Prescod <paul@...>
Date: 2003-07-11T18:28:44+09:00
Subject: Re: My brief and torrid affair with Ruby.

Eric Schwartz wrote:
> Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net> writes:
> 
>>The discussion was about the use of GPLed components. My point was that 
>>if you use those components you can no longer license it under any terms 
>>you care to and that in turn means that it is not really practical to 
>>"sell" it in the sense of selling the bits. Once you allow 
>>redistribution, someone else can redistribute your code at a price much 
>>lower than your own.
> 
> 
> And my point is that they must do so under the terms of the GPL.  You
> have to offer your code under the GPL as well-- which seem fair to me,
> since you're piggybacking on the work of others who've released their
> code publicly. 

We are in violent agreement.

> ...  But if you want to use non-GPL components, perhaps as
> an option, then you can *also* license your code under any onerous,
> nasty, proprietary license you choose.

How can you do so if your code uses a GPL component (which was the 
context of the original question)? Once you embed the GPL code, you lose 
the right to add an onerous, proprietary license.

> Many media projects do this successfully-- I think Ogg Vorbis is
> dual-licensable.

Yes, this business model works if a) you do not depened on any GPLed 
components and b) you expect your customers to embed the software in 
some larger work which they will want to distribute under a non-GPL 
license. This would rarely be the case for a word processor, for example.

But the original thread was about a). The poster was afraid of using 
GPLed code because they didn't want to have to GPL their own code.

"""Specifically, I just happened to look at the source code in DBI.rb
and Oracle.rb and was astonished to discover that these modules are
GPL. Then I quickly found trace.rb, and proxy.rb were GPL as well."""
I use Perl and Python to build commercial products for my own company
and for clients. Unfortunately, until Ruby provides a non-GPL 
alternative I need to go back to Perl or Python."""

Licensing issues tend to become more and more severe as a language ages 
and people try to use it for more mission-critical and/or commercial tasks.

  Paul Prescod