Licensing and modified GPLs (again!)

[Gianugo Rabellino <gi...@apache.org>]

Recently there has been a thread on xindice-users about incorporating 
XQuery using the Qexo engine, based on Kawa. Qexo and Kawa are ruled by 
the Kawa license (http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/License.html) which 
brings an interesting variation on the GPL:

<quote>
These classes are free software.  You can use and re-distribute a class
without restriction (in source or binary form) as long as you use a
version that has not been modified in any way from a version released
by Per Bothner, Red Hat inc, or the Free Software Foundation.

You may make and distribute a modified version, provided you follow
the terms of the GNU General Public License; either version 2,
or (at your option) any later version.
</quote>

The question is: is that enough to defeat GPL's virality? I'm starting 
to think that it might well be the case: as long as you don't modify 
Kawa or Qexo, those classes would be used just like any Sun classes so 
if it's OK to include a Sun jar it might be OK to include even 
Kawa/Qexo. Still, they are shipping even a copy of the GPL2 license with 
the distribution, so I'm not sure it would be enough.

Thoughts?

-- 
Gianugo Rabellino
Pro-netics s.r.l.
http://www.pro-netics.com


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Re: Licensing and modified GPLs (again!)

[Gianugo Rabellino <gi...@apache.org>]

Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>> The question is: is that enough to defeat GPL's virality? I'm starting to
> 
> Defeat isn't quite the right word.  It is actually distributed under two
> licenses, one for unmodified and one for with-modifications.  The Apache
> license also does that, though in our case they are just two clauses in
> a single license.

OK, I see: it's simply not GPL at all.

>>  think that it might well be the case: as long as you don't modify 
>> Kawa or Qexo, those classes would be used just like any Sun classes so 
>> if it's OK to include a Sun jar it might be OK to include even 
>> Kawa/Qexo. Still, they are shipping even a copy of the GPL2 license 
>> with the distribution, so I'm not sure it would be enough.
> 
> 
> It is enough.  To be fair, the distribution should always be paired with
> a license file that describes the terms in effect.  A jar file would
> list the simple terms described, with a link back to the source.  A
> source distribution would have to include the GPL2 license inside,
> though that alone does not make a distribution viral.

Yes, this makes sense. In case we go forward with this experiment I'll 
be very careful in dealing with license details.

> Note, however, that I wouldn't recommend this style of licensing to
> everyone.  Among other things, it requires that the original author
> maintain full copyright on the entire work, or at least not accept
> any contributed modifications without an explicit grant of license.

Yes, I share all your concerns. We're having an interesting discussion 
on licensing over there, we'll see how this turns out.

Thanks for now,

-- 
Gianugo Rabellino
Pro-netics s.r.l.
http://www.pro-netics.com


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Re: Licensing and modified GPLs (again!)

["Roy T. Fielding" <fi...@apache.org>]

> The question is: is that enough to defeat GPL's virality? I'm starting 
> to

Defeat isn't quite the right word.  It is actually distributed under two
licenses, one for unmodified and one for with-modifications.  The Apache
license also does that, though in our case they are just two clauses in
a single license.

>  think that it might well be the case: as long as you don't modify 
> Kawa or Qexo, those classes would be used just like any Sun classes so 
> if it's OK to include a Sun jar it might be OK to include even 
> Kawa/Qexo. Still, they are shipping even a copy of the GPL2 license 
> with the distribution, so I'm not sure it would be enough.

It is enough.  To be fair, the distribution should always be paired with
a license file that describes the terms in effect.  A jar file would
list the simple terms described, with a link back to the source.  A
source distribution would have to include the GPL2 license inside,
though that alone does not make a distribution viral.

Note, however, that I wouldn't recommend this style of licensing to
everyone.  Among other things, it requires that the original author
maintain full copyright on the entire work, or at least not accept
any contributed modifications without an explicit grant of license.

....Roy


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