Thread: [Plib-devel] Any resolution on the license?

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I think I read all of the messages about changing the
license for use in embedded things (consoles, etc...),
but I don't recall what the final outcome of that 
discussion was.

Thanks,
Paul

Paul Bleisch writes:
>
>I think I read all of the messages about changing the
>license for use in embedded things (consoles, etc...),
>but I don't recall what the final outcome of that 
>discussion was.
>
>

Not sure I ever really weighed in so

FWIW
I believe that if we ever want PLib to become a standard
we need a license that will allow 'commercial' interests to 
feel comfortable.

Cheers

Norman

Norman Vine wrote:
> 
> Paul Bleisch writes:
> >
> >I think I read all of the messages about changing the
> >license for use in embedded things (consoles, etc...),
> >but I don't recall what the final outcome of that
> >discussion was.

> Not sure I ever really weighed in so
> 
> FWIW
> I believe that if we ever want PLib to become a standard
> we need a license that will allow 'commercial' interests to
> feel comfortable.

A *standard*...Wow!

I only ever intended PLIB to be something that enough people
would find useful that it would encourage a few more games
writers to make Linux versions.  At that it's successful -
I have no pretensions of it ever becoming another OpenGL or
X/Motif!

No, I don't think PLIB will ever become a standard.  SDL and
CrystalSpace will probably grab that dubious honor.

Commercial interests have to come to terms with LGPL because
it's evident that the reverse is unlikely to be the case.

The company I work for decided to step back and consider
the issue and make a ruling.  Once that ruling is made,
we programmers know where we stand with using libraries
and development tools that are under each of the 'common'
OpenSource licenses.

IMHO, you have to be either 'in' or 'out' of the GPL world.

* If you are 'out', you shouldn't even try to use LGPL'ed
  stuff - don't harass the package maintainers to change
  - just accept that it's the rules of your organization.

* If you are 'in' then you need to get *WAY* in and your
  organization needs to know that you *WILL* be giving
  away small chunks of code to your competitors on some
  occasions - but that the anticipated return through
  not having to write this stuff yourself makes up for
  that.  You'll have to come to terms with the requirement
  that your customers have the theoretical right to
  relink your code against new versions - and if those
  are not .so/.DLL then you have some other corporate
  culture things to deal with.  This is something that
  your management have to know about - don't try to
  do this by the back door.

In the case of my organization, it wasn't a hard call
at all.  We build one-off flight simulators (well,
almost one-off) - and we quite often ship the complete
source code to our customers (under NDA).  Compared to
the trust that entails, LGPL is a walk in the park.

Console games are about as far down the other end of
the spectrum as I could imagine!

-- 
Steve Baker   HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>
              WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
              HomePage : http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
              Projects : http://plib.sourceforge.net
                         http://tuxaqfh.sourceforge.net
                         http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net
                         http://prettypoly.sourceforge.net

Paul Bleisch wrote:
> 
> I think I read all of the messages about changing the
> license for use in embedded things (consoles, etc...),
> but I don't recall what the final outcome of that
> discussion was.

There were two things that struck me:

* Two significant contributors indicated that they didn't
  want to change the license - and since I can't (and
  wouldn't) replace their contributions, the licence
  cannot be changed even if I personally wanted it to
  change.

* Since Dave is actually using PLIB on a console himself
  and is a contributor who DOESN'T want to change the
  license - I really have to believe that there is a way
  to stick to the spirit and law of LGPL and still work
  on PS-2.

So, the conclusion was that the status quo reigns.

There was some discussion of using the REALLY ancient
versions of the separate libraries that were floating
around without a specific license before I bundled them
into PLIB and placed them under LGPL.  I have no objection
to people doing that (under US copyright law, I still retain
copyright on those versions and you'd have to get my
permission to use them - that permission is hereby granted)
- but I've checked everywhere I can think of and I don't have
copies of PUI, etc from that far back.

I don't really relish the idea of buggy old versions of
PUI (especially) from that era floating around on the web,
but so long as people know what they are doing and don't
do anything stoopid like setting up a non-licensed PLIB
in competition with the modern LGPL'ed version, I can live
with that.

-- 
Steve Baker   HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>
              WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
              HomePage : http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
              Projects : http://plib.sourceforge.net
                         http://tuxaqfh.sourceforge.net
                         http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net
                         http://prettypoly.sourceforge.net

Thread: [Plib-devel] Any resolution on the license?

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