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

[Fred Wilson Horch]

Dear Digital Creations,

Thank you for providing Zope.  Please consider releasing it under the
GPL.

As a non-profit organization that is recruiting and training volunteers
to develop code for our web site that runs on Zope, the license
uncertainty is wasting our time and may  force us to abandon Zope as a
core element of our technology platform.

Zope takes advantage of a body of work and a community of people made
possible by the pioneering efforts of the Free Software Foundation,
source of the General Public License (GPL).

Now that Python itself is being distributed under a GPL-compatible
license, you could save everyone a lot of time and grief by clarifying
your business model and the relationship you would like to have with
your development community.  Offering developers the choice to obtain
Zope under the GPL would send a clear message that you value us.

I would love to discuss the issues in detail with you or your legal
counsel by e-mail in a public forum.  Perhaps a zope-license mailing
list would be useful to all concerned.

Sincerely,

Fred Wilson Horch, JD
Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley '95
Development Editor, High Technology Law Journal '94 - '95
--
Fred Wilson Horch			mailto:fhorch@ecoaccess.org
Executive Director, EcoAccess		http://ecoaccess.org/
P.O. Box 2823, Durham, NC 27715-2823	phone: 919.419-8567