Re: Thoughts about gnuplot license and copyrights

[Dave D. <dde...@es...>]

Timoth=E9e Lecomte <tim...@en...> writes:

> Robert Hart wrote:
>
>>=20=20
>>
>>>IMHO the gnuplot license is very close to the standard BSD license, which
>>>=20=20=20=20
>>>
>>>imposes fewer restrictions than the GPL.


My understanding is that GPL comes with lots of words of legalese,
but most of the restrictions are designed to prevent any one person
from restricting anyone else from doing what they want with the code.

BSD has few legal restrictions, but means that someone can modify the
source and then distribute with more restrictions (including binary only).


The one thing I do tend to feel strongly about is that if I put in
time developing open-source software, I don't want someone else
exploiting it for profit. BSD license doesn't prevent that, though GPL
probably does.


>>>
>>
>>The purpose of the GPL, is not (just) to allow forks, or other independent
>>developments and patches, but also to allow code to be reused in entirely
>>separate projects. AFAICT, there is nothing in the gnuplot license that
>>would let me (say) use the gnuplot terminal drivers as the start point for
>>some other graphical program.=20
>>

It may prevent the gnuplot terminal drivers from being
distributed with another program. (Maybe not : it says you cannot
distribute complete modified source tree, but doesn't see you cannot
distribute a partial set of unmodified sources..?)

However, it doesn't prevent you from designing and distributing a
program which uses the same interface, allowing people who download it
to link it locally with gnuplot terminal drivers. Well, that was one
of the notions behind the terminal driver changes described in
term/README

I guess an analogy would be with gnu readline : the GPL
prevents us from distributing a gnuplot binary that links with it, but
someone building from source can link *their* copy with gnu readline.


For a while, we (well, I) was considering breaking gnuplot into layers
of libraries, with the lowest layer offering access to the graphics
drivers, and the highest layer offering most of the gnuplot
functionality. The gnuplot program would then just be a thin client of
the library. But that never happened.


>>whilst happy to use gnuplot, are reluctant to get too involved in
>>developing it because of that.
>>

[ reordering slightly]

> I am exactly asking myself the same thing : is it worth getting
> seriously involved in gnuplot, if it someday vanishes just because
> Thomas won't be joinable to give his agreement ?


Depends on your motives : when I got involved with gnuplot, it was
because *I* was using it a lot, and I wanted to improve it for my own
use. Contributing the changes let others benefit from them, but more
importantly, meant I didn't have to rework the changes locally when a
new version came out. At the time, I didn't realise how rare new
releases were ;-)


I was going to say that even if we can no longer make releases,
there's always the CVS that people can download the source
from. However, looking at the copyright again, could it be said that
having the CVS available on the internet is a violation of

 * Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to
 * distribute the complete modified source code.




> (I can't imagine somebody writing a script that patches the original
> source code, and then uses this modified code to patch his own code...
> as we might guess from the current copyright),

Again, the license prevents distribution of such a work, but you can
do anything you like with the sources locally.



> * gpl, bsd, lgpl, mpl and other all allow to distribute modified code (I
> mean in usual form, not as a patch, and without asking for permission).
> This allows forks, but the most important is that it allows gnuplot
> developpers to release when they want, without relying on the agreement
> of somebody which may one day be unjoinable.
>


Maybe one way out is to persuade Thomas Williams to grant permission
to a trusted nominee to release as and when required. Thomas would
retain the option to revoke that permission at a time of his choosing,
but it does mean that if he does vanish, there is one other person can
release..


dd
--=20
Dave Denholm              <dde...@es...>       http://www.esmertec=
.com