[Zope-dev] Re: ZPL and GPL licensing issues

[Simon Michael]

Thanks for a most illuminating thread. Slight clarification to a
comment of yours Shane -

Shane Hathaway <shane@digicool.com> writes:
> GPL code together.  ZWiki is just in a strange position because the
> GPL is not actually in effect.

I'm not sure I'd use those words - the license is certainly fully "in
effect", I'd say, if not exactly "enforced by a battalion of lawyers".

One of the consequences being that someone re-distributing zope &
zwiki together, under their default licenses, is technically in
violation right now, I think we are all agreeing.

I'm not aware of anyone doing this right now, though there was a zwiki
package for Debian GNU/linux at one point. Would Debian be in
violation shipping both zope & zwiki packages on a cd ? If they
thought so, sooner or later one or the other would get dropped from
the distribution. Unfortunate and detrimental to both zwiki and zope.
In principle this would apply to all linux distributions.  

Does this serve as an example of a problem with the current situation
for DC management ?

Another would be the fact that DC's own options are limited if it (DC)
ever had the desire to distribute or sell something leveraging
zwiki. Sure, it could convince me that LGPL makes better sense, or
offer me a large sum of money to draw up a special alternate license
(hey, on the double :-). But this would have to be repeated with each
developer where the situation arose.

Probably better to update the ZPL to solve this problem in one sweep,
ensure that zope is participating fully within the preeminent sphere
of software creativity, and earn a whole bunch of new support from the
world developer community.

And python did it.

And there's no downside to making yourself GPL-compatible that I can
think of.

> Explain why it's important to you and why you can't get by on the
> current situation.  You can send them directly or I can forward emails
> to the management.

Thanks Shane, please forward. DC management, please consider yourself
lobbied - I'd like to encourage you to review the situation and
consider making some adjustments to zope's license, or join our
discussion here.

Best regards
-Simon