Re: [htdig-dev] Re: HTML Parser and start of CLucene conversion

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

Hey Olly,

	We traded emails a while back Re:Snowball stemmers.	

> Ideally I'd prefer Xapian to be LGPL licenced (or perhaps something less
> restrictive even).  But the current developers don't own all the
> copyrights, so we can't just pick another licence.
> 
> Xapian is derived from software which was released under the GPL by
> BrightStation plc.  BrightStation's plan was to sell licences to those
> wanting to use the code but unwilling to GPL their own code.
>
> I tried to negotiate a relicensing with those who now own the
> BrightStation copyright (or at least claim to), but it seemed to just be
> an infinite timesink.

  Yep, this is one of the problems with Open Source.  It would be smart 
for all licenses to have a 'time horizon' on them where if the copyright 
is not updated in 5-10 years it becomes either public-domain or the 
copyright is assigned to some third party.
 
> I figured a better use of the time would be to simply rewrite any code
> we couldn't convince the author to relicence.  It's certainly not my
> major focus right now, but it's slowly happening naturally.

  Here's a proposal for you:

  Could you break down what portions of Xapian that are 'ownership clean' 
and able to be changed into the LGPL?

  We're solving a lot of the same problems and it seems like we could be 
sharing code a bit.

  Thanks!

-- 
Neal Richter
Knowledgebase Developer
RightNow Technologies, Inc.
Customer Service for Every Web Site
Office: 406-522-1485