Comments on: Solving license proliferation http://blog.generationjava.com/roller/bayard/entry/solving-license-proliferation Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:33:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=wordpress-mu-1.2.1 By: Brian Egge http://blog.generationjava.com/roller/bayard/entry/solving-license-proliferation#comment-1199 Brian Egge Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:58:53 +0000 http://blog.generationjava.com/roller/bayard/entry/solving-license-proliferation#comment-1199 'The Ruby guys' have a license problem, which probably many other projects run into. As I understand, Matz, would be happy to have Ruby have a 'public domain' license, but some of the parser code is GPL'd. So, they can't use a normal license. The JRuby guys are trying a 'tri-license', which I'm not quite sure how that works either. The Sqlite guys have an interesting business model. They declare their license to be 'public domain', but will sell you a license if you want or must have one. I think the most complex parts of licenses are how they deal with 'linkage'. Ohloh provides a nice license scanner as part of their service. I accidentally, included a GPL header in a file I added to a BSD project. I noticed on Ohloh a 'incompatible license' warning on my project, and was able to find the cause of my error. ‘The Ruby guys’ have a license problem, which probably many other projects run into. As I understand, Matz, would be happy to have Ruby have a ‘public domain’ license, but some of the parser code is GPL’d. So, they can’t use a normal license. The JRuby guys are trying a ‘tri-license’, which I’m not quite sure how that works either.

The Sqlite guys have an interesting business model. They declare their license to be ‘public domain’, but will sell you a license if you want or must have one.

I think the most complex parts of licenses are how they deal with ‘linkage’. Ohloh provides a nice license scanner as part of their service. I accidentally, included a GPL header in a file I added to a BSD project. I noticed on Ohloh a ‘incompatible license’ warning on my project, and was able to find the cause of my error.

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