Re: [LAF-devel] Re: Design

[Wesley J L. <wj...@ic...>]

On Monday 11 August 2003 7:13 pm, David M. Brown wrote:
> Wesley J Landaker wrote:
> > Well, using BSD might be problematic...
> > Sleepycat's license is GPL compatible (and obviously compatible
> > with itself) but it's not BSD compatible, because of clause #3:
> I don't see why this is a problem with the BSD license. In fact,
> Sleepycat gives the GPL and BSD license as two good examples of
> licenses which work with their license (at
> http://www.sleepycat.com/download/licensinginfo.shtml). Here is part
> of that page:
> > Likewise, MySQL support would be out, since that's GPL.
> I won't claim to be a license expert, but I'm fairly sure that
> BSD-licensed code can use GPLed code. Now that I think about it
> though, (one of) the point(s) of the GPL is to make sure code stays
> open, and BSD code can be closed later on. But, then that code can no
> longer use the GPLed code, right?

Basically, it's not a matter of any of the above licenses not working=20
together; you can combine BSD, Sleepycat and GPL code all you want and=20
that doesn't change the individual licenses of the code pieces. What=20
does happen, however, is that when you combine and distribute the code=20
together, you have to meet the conditions of *all* the licenses. So=20
that means that if you use a GPL'd library in a BSD program, the entire=20
work is not literally all GPL'd, but you have to meet the conditions of=20
the GPL if you distribute the program and the library together in any=20
form.

Anyway, making LAF code itself BSD is no problem, just as long as=20
everyone involved realizes that while the core code itself is BSD, the=20
program as a whole will have some non-BSD code linked to it (i.e=20
Sleepycat/GPL for the db, LGPL for libgedcom, etc). This of course is=20
no problem as long as it stays open source, but it would be an obstacle=20
for someone trying to close-source it (which I'm not sure would be a=20
good thing anyway).

> Yeah; maybe we can make extensions possible in a couple of different
> ways. Ruby sounds like a definite way to go.  Is it fairly widely
> used? For my benefit can you give a couple of examples of where it's
> being used?

Well, for example, it's part of the regular bindings for several GUI=20
toolkits wxWindows (wxRuby), FOX (FxRuby), subversion distributes ruby=20
language bindings, SDL has ruby bindings, it's used as a scripting=20
language in several MUDs (Mooix & others)...

Here are some interesting links:

http://www.ruby-lang.org (the main site)
http://www.rubycentral.com (an online reference and tutorial book)
http://rubyforge.org/ (a sourceforge like place just for ruby projects)
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/ (sorta like CPAN for ruby...)

=2D-=20
Wesley J. Landaker - wj...@ic...
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