Re: [htdig-dev] HtDig Group Charter, Licensing & LGPL

[Neal R. <ne...@ri...>]

Geoff:
> Gilles:
> > The only other thing to consider is the Berkeley DB code, which seems to
> > be licensed not only under the University of California, but also 
> > Harvard
> 
> It's all BSD-style copyright, which is compatible with LGPL. Otherwise 
> the glibc folks would be sunk, as they include the Berkeley DB too. :-)
> 

	Yes.  The GPL and LGPL are kind of like a one way door.  You can
bring in code from other sources that are licensed in a BSD-type fashion
(BSD, New BSD, MIT, X11).  These licenses are basically equivalent 
other than various advertising clauses.  I've even seen a license that
permits any use, but specifically prohibits the use of the authors name in
any advertising materials. (GAlib)

	Note that the University of California recently amended their
license to all previous code under the copyright "Regents of the
University of California" to strike the advertising clause from the
license.  This does not apply to other parties using a BSD license with
their own copyright.

	Also note that any Free Software Foundation opinions about
the compliance of other licenses with respect to the GPL & LGP are their
_opinion_.  And their opinion about this only matters to software with the
copyright explicitly assigned to the FSF.  Using the GPL as license to
your software does not give the FSF any legal power to interpret the
requirements of the GPL/LGPL license, unless the FSF is the copyright
holder.

	Side note: The FSF feels that BSD licenses with advertising
clauses are incompatible with the GPL/LGPL.  Other groups, the Linux 
Kernel developers among others, make no such statement (device driver code
exchange between BSD & Linux kernel happens).

	A copyright holder of software is free to change licenses,
reassign copyright, withdraw license and interpret/enforce the
requirements of the chosen license as the holder sees fit.

	If R. Stallman hit his head one day, and convinced the rest of the
FSF board, the FSF could withdraw the GPL/LGPL from all GNU software,
close the license and charge whatever they wanted for the GNU software.

	Note that other open source organizations have instituted a policy
that code submissions be assigned to the organization.  Accepting 
substantial submissions from third parties can be risky.  The assignment
of copyright should be ironed out, or else the copyright holder can put
their rights in jeopardy.

	Hypothetical:  Person A submits GPL code to Group B, and Group B
accepts code.  Due to the 'viral' quality of the GPL, it is possible that
if Person A was so inclined she could take Group B to court and force
Group B to assign co-copyright of all Group A software to Person A under
the terms of Person A's license of her software under the GPL.  This could
result in Person A basically hijacking the copyright of the software.  A
mess... which is why the FSF, Mozilla, and other groups have a copyright
assignment policy... in part to protect the group.

	OpenBSD just went through something like this.  Darren Reed, the 
author (and copyright holder) of 'Ip Filter' asserted his rights and
amended the license interpretation of his software to require that any
modified or derived works be authorized by him.  OpenBSD didn't like this
and proceeded to create a replacement.  Because Darren's license was a
BSD-type license, with no viral quality, OpenBSD was free to do as they
wished.
	If 'Ip Filter' had been under the GPL, then hypothetically Mr. Reed
could have taken the OpenBSD group to court and caused problems.

	Granted, none of this has been well tested in court and I'm not a
lawyer, this is a common interpretation of the issues.
 

	Again I want to reiterate that RightNow Technologies will be
assigning copyright of contributed software to The HtDig Group.  We also
are not looking for special privileges.

	The only thing we are hoping for is that appropriate portions of
HtDig be relicensed under the LGPL... or more simply the entire
collection is dual licensed.  This is to protect the company from some
third party contributing code to HtDig without assigning copyright to the
group then comming after us for license infringement.

	As Geoff pointed out, other groups have asked for 'libhtdig'
repackagings (GnuCash, KDE, others).  This is what we want to provide, and
it will benefit any future users of HtDig.. even our direct competitors
;-)

Thanks.

-- 
Neal Richter 
Knowledgebase Developer
RightNow Technologies, Inc.
Customer Service for Every Web Site