Hey Olly, We traded emails a while back Re:Snowball stemmers.
> Ideally I'd prefer Xapian to be LGPL licenced (or perhaps something less > restrictive even). But the current developers don't own all the > copyrights, so we can't just pick another licence. > > Xapian is derived from software which was released under the GPL by > BrightStation plc. BrightStation's plan was to sell licences to those > wanting to use the code but unwilling to GPL their own code. > > I tried to negotiate a relicensing with those who now own the > BrightStation copyright (or at least claim to), but it seemed to just be > an infinite timesink. Yep, this is one of the problems with Open Source. It would be smart for all licenses to have a 'time horizon' on them where if the copyright is not updated in 5-10 years it becomes either public-domain or the copyright is assigned to some third party. > I figured a better use of the time would be to simply rewrite any code > we couldn't convince the author to relicence. It's certainly not my > major focus right now, but it's slowly happening naturally. Here's a proposal for you: Could you break down what portions of Xapian that are 'ownership clean' and able to be changed into the LGPL? We're solving a lot of the same problems and it seems like we could be sharing code a bit. Thanks! -- Neal Richter Knowledgebase Developer RightNow Technologies, Inc. Customer Service for Every Web Site Office: 406-522-1485 ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=6595&alloc_id=14396&op=click _______________________________________________ ht://Dig Developer mailing list: htdig-dev@lists.sourceforge.net List information (subscribe/unsubscribe, etc.) https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/htdig-dev