On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 19:13 +1000, Gordon Wrigley wrote: > Disclaimer: I appreciate that no one here is an IP lawyer and that any > discussion doesn't count as legal advice.
sure. Please also don't take my statements as legal advise, btw :) I know some good lawyers knowledgable in open source stuff, one of them having been a programmer before, so they can help if it comes to it :) > Just so I'm clear, as I understand it, if execnet were GPL then: > 1: It would still be free (beer) for us to use and abuse any way we > choose internally as long as we aren't distributing anything related > to it. > 2: Any modifications we made to it and distributed would be subject to > GPL or the alternate license. > 3: Any code derived from it that we distributed would be subject to > GPL or the alternate license. > 4: Any code that imports it that we distribute would be subject to GPL > or the alternate license. > 5: Alternatively the LGPL picture would be the same except 4 wouldn't apply. > > Please correct me if any of that is wrong. that's also my understanding. > Assuming it is all correct then I have no problems with 1-3. > > Point 4 could be interesting, now the obvious scenario here would seem > to be that we write some tool that uses execnet and wish to sell it > and or make it publicly available. That scenario I have no problem > with it is part and parcel of building things out of open source > components. Indeed in that vein we have an internal tool that uses > execnet that we are looking at distributing as open source. As you > said "execnet presents a unique and valuable approach to glueing > Python interpreters and doing rapid deployment". And the system we > have built around it pushes that approach further and we would like to > share that. cool. Curious i am :) > But there is a more subtle example that concerns me, we are an > embedded hardware company and use python (and more recently py lib) in > our toolchain. Now imagine for the sake of discussion that we wanted > to share some of that infrastructure with one of our B2B clients. > Maybe we want to give them a drop of our testing infrastructure so > they can use it to test products that contain our chips. I'm not sure > if there is anything in the test infrastructure we would consider > proprietary in that manner, but there definitely is in other areas of > our infrastructure and py lib is becoming ever more popular > internally. Under LGPL distributing this code in that manner would > seem to be fine as we aren't distributing py lib or anything derived > from it. Are you telling your clients to pre-install py lib? > What would be the implications of GPL licensing? You might need a separate agreement then. > and how do you see this scenario sitting with whatever > alternate license you are considering? All kinds of. I am sure we can find some fitting scheme for your case if GPL otherwise restricts your operations in undesirable ways. thanks for your clear and thoughtful response, btw. best, holger > On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 5:36 PM, holger krekel <hol...@merlinux.eu> wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > some of you know that i am considering licensing and general > > funding issues recently, see here for the current licensing status: > > > > http://codespeak.net/py/trunk/faq.html#whygpl > > > > However, i am considering releasing the execnet code under the > > GPL and the the rest under the LGPL. This would mean that execnet > > can be used in free software but not in proprietary software > > without getting a different license. > > > > I think execnet presents a unique and valuable approach to glueing > > Python interpreters and doing rapid deployment. It can particularly > > help with managing clouds of computers and I'd like to put more efforts > > into improving and extending in this area. And i'd like to tap into > > getting dual-licensing revenue. Which, on a side note, would flow back > > to me and e.g. http://merlinux.eu/people.html so we all can continue to work > > on great things. > > > > I am open to comments, arguments or bribes in the form > > of contracts for improvements :) > > > > cheers, > > > > holger > > > > Maybe also of interest to you (currently unreachable for me, though) > > http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html > > > > -- > > Metaprogramming, Python, Testing: http://tetamap.wordpress.com > > Python, PyPy, pytest contracting: http://merlinux.eu > > _______________________________________________ > > py-dev mailing list > > py-dev@codespeak.net > > http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/py-dev > > > -- Metaprogramming, Python, Testing: http://tetamap.wordpress.com Python, PyPy, pytest contracting: http://merlinux.eu _______________________________________________ py-dev mailing list py-dev@codespeak.net http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/py-dev
