[Zope] Re: ZPL and GPL: What should one consider when choosing a license?

[Tres Seaver]

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Alex Turner wrote:
> On Dec 21, 2007 7:56 PM, Ross Patterson <me-5WM5oVD3klEBe96aLqz0jA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
>> Chris McDonough <chrism-ccARneWBNkgAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes:
>>
>>> On Dec 21, 2007, at 3:53 PM, Ross Patterson wrote:
>>>> Unfortunately, the comment by Chris McDonough mentioned in the latter
>>>> doesn't seem to be accessible any more.  I'd love to read it.
>>> It said:
>>>
>>> """
>>> I don't think Plone is "bad" because it uses the GPL. I do think it's
>>> a pain in the balls to have to ask authors of various GPL things if
>>> they're willing to relicense ZPL or other BSD-type license in order to
>>> be able to incorporate their software into CMF or Zope (as required by
>>> the ZC contributor's agreement in order to check it into either of
>>> those projects). It just puts up a big enough impediment to sharing
>>> code that the codebases don't intermingle much.
>>> What's gauche about using the GPL is that at least by default, the
>>> Plone guys don't need to ask the Zope guys if they can ship their
>>> software. They get the benefit (or pain ;-) of shipping it all without
>>> any extra work. But the Zope guys need to go track down the copyright
>>> owners of various bits of Plone code and get all of their permissions
>>> to ship their software in CMF or Zope via a relicense. That's just
>>> hurts collaboration badly. It's anti-sharing which I think is
>>> practically just gauche.
>>> """
>> Thanks for digging that up, its a really good point to have in the mix
>> here.
>>
> 
> au contraire - it is the ZPL which is anti-sharing in my estimation.  You do
> not have to contribute changes back to a project which you extend in a BSD
> style license, so you can take a BSD style licensed product, extend it, and
> sell it without giving a single thing back to the original author of the
> original system except a credit note in the copyright statement.
> 
> BSD and ZPL is share and do what you like
> GPL is share and share alike
> 
> Thats the core philosophy difference.  If you like others to share too, then
> use GPL or LGPL (possibly AGPL actually, GPL doesn't gaurentee much of
> anything for application service providers as I've found out, which is
> probably most people using Plone etc.), if you want to give your code away
> then use BSD/ZPL, if you want changes back, then use AGPL.  And if you think
> it wont happen, it already did.  Microsoft took the BSD Kerberos code and
> re-purposed it into Windows, changed the protocol slightly and pissed off
> many people.

Rehashing GPL vs ZPL is off topic here, because the ZPL is the
*mandated* license for any code contributed into the zope.org
repository:  that choice is not subject to debate.


Tres.
- --
===================================================================
Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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