Hi,
I have just gotten in contact with Richard Stallman of GNU to investigate
whether there was a way to use the GPL or a GPL compatible licence for
FreeCard's code, and I am currently discussing with him how we would
circumvent the "virus" problem that would cause your stacks to become GPLed
when merged into a standalone. I'm still working out the details, but
basically he suggested adding the following exception to the FreeCard
licence (which would in all other regards be merely a verbatim copy of the
GPL):
As a special exception, integrated combinations of FreeCard in
executable form with your stacks to be displayed using
FreeCard is permitted under your choice of license, provided
the license does not permit extraction of the FreeCard
executable from the combination.
I'm still investigating how we'd prevent someone from writing their own
editing environment stack and saving that as a standalone to be able to
sell an unfree FreeCard. I guess it'll be something like SuperCard's clause
that forbids building products that directly compete with it. I'll keep you
posted. Could Eric (and anyone else who's versed in the law) point out any
loopholes this extension might have?
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
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