Re: [CLucene-dev] Re: license (clarification)

[<rg...@sd...>]

Hi,

        I just joined the mailing list, however I have read all the
        messages in the archives.

        I had a few comments about licenses; but I want to preface
        them by saying that the clucene developers can expect me to
        work on clucene regardless of whether it is under the GPL,
        LGPL, BSD or Apache licenses.

        First, I am unsure of why Max Khesin thinks the LGPL is
        incompatible with a proprietary product in a way that the
        Apache license isn't.  Both licenses would require that you do
        something when distributing a proprietary program that used
        CLucene.  The Apache requires that notices appear in the
        proprietary software, the LGPL requires the receiver of the
        proprietary software be able to get the source code to
        CLucene.  Personally, I think placing as zip file of CLucene
        source on a CD or web page is less burdensome than cluttering
        up my "About" sceen.  Would the names "Apache" and "Apache
        Software Foundation" be replaced with Ben van Klinkehn ?

        Some licenses allow the switching later on to others, such as
        the latest BSD licensed software can be re-licensed as GPL (or
        practically anything), and LGPL can be re-licensed as GPL, but
        since Apache requires that notice it can't be switched to GPL
        or LGPL later.

        You can offer the software under all three choices, at the
        user's discretion.  This is called "dual licensing" or
        "multiple licensing."

        Someone made reference to the original writers of Lucene and
        their intentions.  When a piece of software code is re-written
        completely, so that you change every single line, which is
        what you do in switching languages, it is a new copyrightable
        work not a derived work of the previous.  (This is a grand
        simplification, of course, and there are surely exceptions.)
        An example is the Berkeley group that took AT&T Unix and
        re-worked it until it was the separate work of BSD Unix.
        Sometimes people are confused about this issue and think they
        can't own code they have written while having someone else's
        example in front of them, because they have heard discussions
        of "clean room programming" and "virgin programmers" (virgin
        programmers are so inexperienced they are known never to have
        studied common examples).  The issues of clean room and virgin
        refer to trade secrets and whether reverse engineering was
        used, not copyrights.  We should be grateful to the Apache
        group for saving us from all that by making their work Free
        Software.

        In any case, the original Lucene and the Apache project is
        focused on code meant to be run on a server, and most ordinary
        users of the code don't have it on their computers; while
        CLucene, being a simple library not in Java, is well suited to
        being used in applications distributed everywhere.  Users of
        software via a server don't have much freedom to modify the
        code anyway, and the people running the server are more likely
        to be in a corporation, so the two environments naturally lead
        to different outlooks on licenses.

        This message is long because I wanted to get all my license
        opinions into one message.  My future emails will be about
        using and modifying CLucene :)

--Rob