That is completely incorrect, no matter how many folks keep saying it. Put simply: using the LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice distributions does not raise any practical limitations on most personal use as well as use by individuals in their business or institutional activities.
- Dennis PS: The preferred terms is ALv2 (ASL is something else), or simply Apache License. DETAILS Committers to Apache projects retain all rights, while granting the ASF a perpetual license to distribute under ASF-chosen license terms. There is no transfer of ownership whatsoever. (Just for a moment of irony, it was the case that Sun and then Oracle did require a [non-exclusive] transfer of ownership, as does the Free Software Foundation to this day.) You can find the ALv2 everywhere. The Committer License Agreement (CLA) is here: <http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt>. The key statement is this: "Except for the license granted herein to the Foundation and recipients of software distributed by the Foundation, You reserve all right, title, and interest in and to Your Contributions." Note that people who simply make use of the ALv2 and distribute their own (and derivative) work under the ALv2 don't have to make any such grant. It is contributors to ASF-sponsored projects that do this. This is not much difference to the e-mail grants of license that LibreOffice committers make to the TDF, except those grants name specific licenses (and say nothing about patents). The fundamental technical difference is that the Apache ALv2 license is not a reciprocal license. It does not require that derivative works be provided in source code and under the same license. The ALv2 also has no limitations on the use of a distribution or its derivative in an embedded system or inside of a [commercial] distributed service. The license differences have no practical impact on end users. It does have ideological importance to contributors. Some end users may want to express their allegiance to one model or the other. In cultivating such allegiance, it is valuable to stick to the facts. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: webmaster-Kracked_P_P [mailto:webmas...@krackedpress.com] Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 12:19 To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] LO vs AOO : GPL/LGPL vs ASL licences [ ... ] > As I was told, LO's license will allow the developer to own the coding they are sharing with the project, where AOO's really will give that project the ownership of the coding. Whether or not the "wording" is stating that, that is what most developers I have "talked" with have told me. [ ... ] -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
