Ok,
so I talked to everyone, meaning : Richard Stallman, and Bruce Perens.
One is the inventor of "GNU", the other the co-author of "Open Source
Definition" (and recently on the board of Telkel, helping on jboss).
The bottom line is pretty clear. Since we define what we understand by
containing/modified/derived work and we own the copyright, we pretty much
give up our legal rights to sue anyone on violation of our terms. That is
the point that Brian Behlendorf made to his lists. So now that I have got
the "ah! we are right" ego-thing out of the way, we can move on...
However there are 2 things that I take into account
1- Stallman, even though he was the most supportive of all (and great in his
emails) does believe it can provide "unpure" interpretations from some
people. I want to avoid that, out of respect for the movement.
2- Perception is important and we DO want businesses to embed jboss.jar. I
WANT that out of ambition for OUR movement.
So all parties have recommended that a move to LGPL
We (board) are OK with LGPL because it provides:
1- The LGPL triggers ONLY on modification of the code (no "contain" thing in
the definition) so to the FAQ: "Can I embed jboss.jar AS IS in my
application under ANY license legally?" the answer is A: "YES". A
resounding yes... Period.
2- If someone wants to modify jboss he needs to talk to us and so we still
get the code back and some protection against BEA/IBM and such. I
appreciate the Apache folks saying "it is mature, let it go", however it is
getting more mature, yes, I am letting go of some protection yes, but we are
still fighting in a $9Bn market and I don't want to count only on "faith".
So LGPL provides both points and seems to fit the bill.
1- Embedding is encouraged
2- Code feedback is alive!
OK basically I would like this change to go through for the FINAL release
and that means that ALL authors NEED TO SEND THE BOARD A NOTE SAYING THEY
AGREE WITH THE CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Finally while we (the board) propose LGPL, one of the members of the board
recommended we open discussion on the "what license" thing. My primary
reason for proposing LGPL is "move fast" for FINAL, and also it seems there
is still a lot of high feelings about licenses and I don't want another
religious battle around meanings of words, we have 2 weeks left to FINAL so
let's do it...
marc
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Marc Fleury, PhD
CTO, Telkel Inc.
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