[Zope-dev] ZPL and GPL

Michael R. Bernstein webmaven@lvcm.com
26 Jun 2001 12:37:01 -0700


On 25 Jun 2001 21:54:16 +0200, Jerome Alet wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2001 at 12:22:32PM -0700, Michael R. Bernstein wrote:
> > 
> > Other than keeping the door open for this eventuality, is there any
> > other reason to choose a BSD style license over the GPL?
> > ...
> > Unless I've misunderstood something (which is certainly possible), DC
> > doesn't seem to have anything to lose by switching from a BSD style
> > license to the GPL (or a GPL style license with an additional optional
> > attribution clause), and quite a bit to gain.
> 
> I personnally would love to see both Python and Zope be GPLed.
> 
> However we should take into consideration the fact that this would 
> mandate that any Zope product should be GPLed too, since in the FSF
> view we "link" them to Zope.

Did anyone ever get an 'official' statement to that effect? Specifically
that creating a Zope Product that subclasses Zope base classes would
require the product to be GPL'd? What about the LGPL?

> The same for Python C extensions, we would link them to a GPLed software 
> (Python), so they would have to be GPLed too.
> 
> That's why I'm pretty sure that unfortunately both Zope and Python 
> would loose supporters if they were GPLed.

This makes sense.

Michael.