Re: [Hebmorph-thinktank] HebMorph patch

[Itamar Syn-H. <it...@co...>]

Efraim,

I'm no lawyer, and certainly don't strive to being one. I did do some 
reading and I can certainly say GPL is an applicable license for the 
model I'm trying to enforce. There may be better licenses to work with 
though, and I'm certainly willing to open this for discussion.

One of the obstacles I have to face is people trying to go around the 
licensing issue. Some of who that are aware of a possible licensing 
issue don't want to pay and will do everything they can to work around 
that. In that respect, GPL is quite compromised - although there's still 
a lot of room to interpretation, and some courts will definitely accept 
mine as I described it yesterday. I can either live with that, or make a 
license change to allow free open-source usage but require commercial 
players to pay. If that labels HebMorph a non-free software, so be it.

If GPL requires commercial players to either release their sources or 
negotiate a different license even when using the lib in a binary form, 
then this is what I wanted to have. I care less about upstreaming, as 
I'll be able to do so myself once the code is released. Also, as it 
happens I find myself supporting users more than users supporting the 
project.

Re:

I agree with you that commercial users who use hebmorph
should contribute financially to the project. I don't see a requirement
to do so anywhere unless they want to do something which is otherwise
not allowed under the GPL


What will be something that is not allowed under the GPL?

Itamar.

On 10/06/2011 05:02, Efraim Feinstein wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to clarify something about your (possibly unconventional?)
> interpretation of the GPL. The GPL itself doesn't limit the private use
> of GPL'd software. It does limit distribution of binaries that are
> compiled from GPL sources. So, I think you're right about the particular
> case you were asked about: you can't legally distribute binaries
> compiled from GPL source code without distributing the source code (or
> buying an exception to the GPL). You can, however, distribute binaries
> in a commercial product and distribute the source code or an offer for
> the source code and have no further obligations to upstream.
>
> Stated more broadly, the GPL is not a usage license, it's a copyright
> license for the source code.
>
> By the way, I agree with you that commercial users who use hebmorph
> should contribute financially to the project. I don't see a requirement
> to do so anywhere unless they want to do something which is otherwise
> not allowed under the GPL. Preventing commercial *use* as-such, though,
> would make the software non-free.
>
> -Efraim
>
> On 06/09/2011 08:14 PM, Itamar Syn-Hershko wrote:
>> The thought behind licensing HebMorph with a restrictive license
>> (currently GPL) is to be able to negotiate a usage fee from commercial
>> users. This is to make sure the project can stay alive and make real
>> progress. And let me elaborate.
>>
>>
>>
>> Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, no commercial usage is allowed
>> without either purchasing a commercial license or releasing the code
>> that uses HebMorph as GPL. Perhaps GPL is not all too strict about this,
>> and can be interpreted differently in terms of "derivative work", and I
>> might make a license change to reflect that. The general idea, again, is
>> to be able to support further development of the project and make sure
>> it meets its far-reaching goals.
>>
>