Re: [beepy-devel] FW: beepy

[Justin W. <dae...@ei...>]

On Thu, 2006-10-05 at 07:47 +0800, Andy Dent wrote:
> On 05/10/2006, at 7:00 AM, Justin Warren wrote:
> 
> > beepy is LGPL, which is a pretty permissive license. What aspects  
> > of the
> > licensing are you finding problematic?
> 
> Probably that LGPL becomes GPL unless code is dynamically linked so  
> unless he wants to wrap his entire Python distro somehow in a dylib,  
> beepy implies GPL as far as lawyers go. (Opinion from two different  
> intellectual property lawyers in two different employers over the  
> last 8 years.)
> 
> Many people misunderstand LGPL and assume it is more permissive than  
> in reality.

My experience of legal opinions is that they are highly specific to the
individual circumstances under which they are given; indeed, reality and
the law occasionally contradict one another. I will respectfully
disagree with the general statement above, as far as it applies to
beepy. My reading of Section 6 in particular leads me to a different
view.

However, it is not my intention to stifle people's ability to use the
library. I originally intended for the library to be usable by anyone,
but that if modifications to it were made, that everyone could benefit
from them. Given the niche nature of beepy, and the passage of time, I
am less concerned with forcing people to share than I once was; I would
like to think that if someone did improve beepy significantly that they
would want to share their work with others as I have shared mine with
you.

The BSD license has been proposed, which is essentially a free-for-all
license. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Perhaps a Pythonic
license of some kind?

-- 
Justin Warren <dae...@ei...>