My philosophy with relicensing has always been that the GPL is nice because it forces people to ask us before they go and build a commercial project on it. Every other case we want to encourage people to do.
I wrote up a good bit on the license awhile ago, see http://geoserver.org/display/GEOSDOC/8+Licensing I hope it makes it pretty clear that we don't believe this case to be in violation. But I agree it could be better to more prominently let people know that we can grant license exceptions if they feel they need them. But I do think people who are wanting to build full commercial projects should either share their source with the community or else pay a license fee. Unfortunately we still haven't finished all the contributor agreements to be able to relicense. But hopefully we can get to it in the new year. There was a company that was very interested in licensing GeoServer for use in a commercial project, so that provided motivation. But they decided to go another route (buy a company), and no one has brought up any real need for relicensing since. Chris Mike Pumphrey wrote: > Although I am not a license guru, I feel like we should figure out if > there is a legal way to integrate with restrictive licensing, and then > advertise this prominently (or at least somewhere on our wiki)... > > ...unless there is some reason why we wouldn't want GeoServer used in > these cases? > > > Thanks, > Mike Pumphrey > OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org > > > stumit63 wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I have come across this a number of times. If you have VS Studio 6 or >> later, >> check out the license agreement. It prohibits distribution of any >> application built using VS with any application that is (to use >> Microsoft's >> term) virally licensed. According to Bill, that includes GPL, LGPL and >> GNU >> amongst others. Interestingly, if you research into it, they do not >> include >> the BSD license in that term. >> >> Cheers >> Stuart >> >> >> Andrea Aime-4 wrote: >>> See here: >>> http://www.nabble.com/help-with-converting-Geoserver-site-to-Mapserver-td20919019.html >>> >>> >>> >>> "Our organization has been putting the finishing touches on an >>> application that is supposed to be released by the end of the year. >>> Unexpectedly, it did not pass license review, because it used >>> Geoserver, which is GPL-licensed. " >>> >>> Isn't this really crazy? >>> Cheers >>> Andrea >>> >>> -- >>> Andrea Aime >>> OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org >>> Expert service straight from the developers. >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> >>> SF.Net email is Sponsored by MIX09, March 18-20, 2009 in Las Vegas, >>> Nevada. >>> The future of the web can't happen without you. Join us at MIX09 to >>> help >>> pave the way to the Next Web now. Learn more and register at >>> http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;208669438;13503038;i?http://2009.visitmix.com/ >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Geoserver-devel mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel >>> >>> >> -- Chris Holmes OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org Expert service straight from the developers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SF.Net email is Sponsored by MIX09, March 18-20, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The future of the web can't happen without you. Join us at MIX09 to help pave the way to the Next Web now. Learn more and register at http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;208669438;13503038;i?http://2009.visitmix.com/ _______________________________________________ Geoserver-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel
