On Wednesday 05 December 2007 12:22:03 vijay chopra wrote: > Why is "license proliferation" a problem?
Two words: License incompatibility. Example: We use the MPL in Dirac & Kamaelia (aside from other reasons) due to the explicit patent grant. If we only used that though, it'd be incompatible licensewise with other code. So we take advantage of the MPL's stipulation where it says you can say other licenses you can use as well. Hence that's why we use the MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license (same as firefox) - it maxmises compatibility. Also Dirac & Kamaelia are both designed to sit inside & power things as libraries so allowing use under the LGPL is important, since the intent is to maximise who can use these things against a balance of protecting the the license fee payers investment. The more licenses you have, the harder it becomes to figure out compatibility. (It's not like adding a module to creative commons) Example: 2 pieces of code under two very different licenses: 1 You may only distribute code on tuesdays 2 You may only distribute code on thursdays You can't merge code under these two licenses and redistribute since you'd breach one license or the other. Michael. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
