Open source licensing issues (was: Calling a program without knowing theparms)

James wrote:
>The choice of license is very crucial.  They all have their good points
and their
>bad points.  It all depends on what your objective is.
>
>You may want to take a look at http://www.opensource.org at the variety of
>licenses that are available.  (And it doesn't hurt if you can read
"legalese")
>
>IMHO, if you want to write a module that anyone can use in their home
grown apps,
>by all means make it GPL.  On the other hand it is a "poison pill" to
anyone
>wanting to incorporate it into a commercial application because the GPL
requires
>that their entire app become GPL.
>...

By all means, look at the details of each license before choosing one.
Regarding the "poison pill" nature of the GPL, you might want to
consider the LGPL, or "library GPL".  LGPL is a looser form of the GPL
that allows linking your open source library to other code without
requiring that other code to also follow the same license.  Thus,
commercial products can link to an LGPL-licensed library.

From an RPG point of view (this is RPG400-L after all!), bound calls
would require something like LGPL for the linked module, or else the
whole program would have to have an open-source license.  However, for
dynamic calls (and probably calls to service programs), calling GPL
code should be allowed from non-GPL programs.  (IANAL, though.)

   - - - - -

Someone else mentioned MS's dislike for open-source licences.  Linux
advocates often like to quote Mohandas Gandhi who said: "First they
ignore you.  Then they laugh at you.  Then they fight you.  Then you
win."  MS has already tried ignoring Linux, and laughing at Linux.
Now, they are well into the third phase.

The fact that MS has placed restrictions into their tools licenses
may already be irrelevant anyways.  The MS tools cost money, and so
most people buying those tools are likely to be commercial concerns
anyways.  Open source fans can easily find freely available open
source toolkits, even for MS systems.

MS's current campaign against open-source licensing is clearly
extremist, based on faulty logic, and may well backfire on them.
They may have found an ally in the current administration in DC, but
antitrust suits in Europe will be much harder to defend against.

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com

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