Licensing Our Code
Jonathan Brinley
what about licensing for our own code? E.g., stylesheets, themes,
plugins... Ryan and I were talking about putting some stuff at Google
Code, which requires an open source license. Options include Apache,
MIT, GNU, BSD, Mozilla, or Artistic licenses.
Any preferences?
Have a nice day,
Jonathan
--
Jonathan M. Brinley
Eric Lease Morgan
On Jun 23, 2008, at 1:50 PM, Jonathan Brinley wrote:
> Any preferences?
GNU++
--
ELM
Jonathan Rochkind
and Ryan with choosing and reccommending an appropriate license. :)
I personally prefer Apache or MIT to GNU. The difference is that GNU is
paradoxically more restrictive by insisting that anyone that uses your
code must also release under GNU, while MIT and Apache are actually less
restrictive.
Jonathan
Jonathan Brinley wrote:
> So, now that we've gotten squared away with licensing for our content,
> what about licensing for our own code? E.g., stylesheets, themes,
> plugins... Ryan and I were talking about putting some stuff at Google
> Code, which requires an open source license. Options include Apache,
> MIT, GNU, BSD, Mozilla, or Artistic licenses.
>
> Any preferences?
>
> Have a nice day,
> Jonathan
>
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Edward M. Corrado
Edward
Carol Bean
I think in the case of Journal stuff like stylesheets, plugins, etc., it should be viral.
Carol
Carol Bean
bean...@gmail.com
Jonathan Rochkind
Carol Bean wrote:
> GNU++
>
> I think in the case of Journal stuff like stylesheets, plugins, etc.,
> it *should
> *be viral.
Eric Lease Morgan
On Jun 23, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> Why?
>
> Carol Bean wrote:
>> GNU++
>>
>> I think in the case of Journal stuff like stylesheets, plugins, etc.,
>> it *should
>> *be viral.
>
Because we want to spread the word as much as possible.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
Carol Bean
Keep in mind, however, if someone wants a different license for one of these things, they can request it. None of the licenses preclude granting different licenses to specific parties.
Carol
Why?
Carol Bean wrote:
> GNU++
>
> I think in the case of Journal stuff like stylesheets, plugins, etc.,
> it *should
> *be viral.
>
> Carol
>
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <roch...@jhu.edu> wrote:
>
>
>> Yes, I don't see any reason not to do this. I charge Jonathan Brinley
>> and Ryan with choosing and reccommending an appropriate license. :)
>>
>> I personally prefer Apache or MIT to GNU. The difference is that GNU is
>> paradoxically more restrictive by insisting that anyone that uses your
>> code must also release under GNU, while MIT and Apache are actually less
>> restrictive.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>>
Carol Bean
bean...@gmail.com
Jonathan Rochkind
My opinion is that I dont' like the way the GNU license requires anyone
that uses it to license their project under GNU too. Therefore, if you
have some Apache licensed code, and some GNU licensed code---it is not
legally possible to combine them together in one project. I don't like
this. I think the GNU license is unneccesarily restrictive. You can
combine Apache and MIT code together all you want (for instance), but as
soon as GNU enters the picture---oops, you can't use it unless ALL the
code in the project is GNU. I don't like this.
I think Carol said she specifically DID like this. Maybe I
misunderstood? I was curious why.
I am in favor of any code related to the Journal project being open
source. I just prefer an MIT or Apache style license, for the reasons
above.
Jonathan
--
Carol Bean
Carol
Carol Bean
bean...@gmail.com
Ryan Wick
FWIW, at Wikipedia anyway, the MIT license is listed as GPL
Compatible, while Apache is listed as GPL Compatible v.3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility#GPL_Compatibility
Ryan Wick
Jonathan Rochkind
ask and then asking? They're not even going to think to ask normally,
they're just going to assume, oh well, GNU, cant' use it. Our stuff
mostly isn't valuable enough for someone to go out of their way to find
us and ask special permission--and do we really need the extra work of
fielding and deciding upon such requests?
To me, this is the same sort of issue that led the SPARC/DOAJ thing to
require CC-BY, even though some authors might want more restrictive
licenses like CC-SA. CC-SA essentially corresponds to GNU approach, and
CC-BY the MIT/Apache approach. SPARC/DOAJ realizes that an increasingly
complicated license environment is in itself a barrier to re-use, when
you there are different more-or-less-restrictive license restrictions
for different things and you need to figure out what's what and ask for
special permission to do what you need to do etc. So SPARC/DOAJ says,
forget that, if you want our seal of approval, you need the less
restrictive CC-BY which does not have GNU-style "viral" requirements.
While it's not an issue of a 'seal' here, complicated confusing
contradictory license landscape is a real problem. I'd rather just do
MIT/Apache style and not contribute to it. If we're planning on giving
people alternate licenses if they need it anyway if they ask---what's
the harm in just having the less restrictive license from the first place?
But license religious wars, like OS wars and editor wars, can go on
forever. We may just have to agree to disagree. The editorial committee
can always just vote on it after we've had sufficient discussion,
majority wins.
Jonathan
Jonathan Rochkind
without conflict (the new combination would have the GPL applied to the
whole)".
Can be combined, with latest versions of all the licenses, so long as
you are happy to make the resulting aggregate work GPL too. GPL eats
everything. I don't like it, myself.
Carol Bean
Edward M. Corrado
Why make work for ourselves and them of making them figure out who to
ask and then asking? They're not even going to think to ask normally,
they're just going to assume, oh well, GNU, cant' use it. Our stuff
mostly isn't valuable enough for someone to go out of their way to find
us and ask special permission--and do we really need the extra work of
fielding and deciding upon such requests?
To me, this is the same sort of issue that led the SPARC/DOAJ thing to
require CC-BY, even though some authors might want more restrictive
licenses like CC-SA.
Based on this reasoning (the reasoning being the license we choose for the journal articles), I think we should use the BSD license. More specifically, I'd link it to the CC-BSD page:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BSD/
I think it is the closest of the CC-approved software license (the others being GPL and LgPL) to what we ask people writing articles to submit to. Thus, we should do the same (or as close as we can) for the software.
Edward
Jonathan Rochkind
I had seen before was that CC was interested in text, but leaving
software licenses to others. I don't think I'm concerned with picking a
"CC-approved" software license, really.
The Open Source Initiative still seems a better place to me to look for
'approved' or 'official' open source licenses than CC:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category
Jonathan
Ryan Wick
and I just pick one of the recommended ones?
Ryan Wick
Jonathan Rochkind
real problem with it. Since you guys (mainly jbrinley) have actually
written most of the stuff that we're talking about licensing, I think
you guys (mainly jbrinley) get more say. You've seen the arguments both
ways, pick one, see if anyone has an objection. That's my suggestion.
Jonathan
Carol Bean
Jonathan Brinley
(http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php). Any objections?
Code will be at http://code.google.com/p/c4lj/
Have a nice day,
Jonathan
--
Edward M. Corrado
Well, then here we go: I hereby suggest we use the MIT license
(http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php). Any objections?
No objections here.
Edward
Eric Lease Morgan
On Jun 25, 2008, at 9:08 PM, Jonathan Brinley wrote:
> Well, then here we go: I hereby suggest we use the MIT license
> (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php). Any objections?
Speaking now, and for ever holding my peace, I still advocate GPL. At
the same time, I think all of the licenses have more things in common
than differences. Put yet another way, I can live with the MIT license.
--
Eric
Carol Bean
Tom Keays
according to GNU itself.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
Tom