Nicolás A. Ortega <[email protected]> writes: > I've tried having this discussion on #fsf and #gnu, and I think that > this license has the potential to be a great software license, > especially for libraries. > > To my understanding the Sleepycat License[0] is a copyleft license in > which all derivatives of the work must be licensed likewise (under the > Sleepycat license) and works that use a project under this license must > disclose source code. > > There are, however a couple problems with this license, the first one > (as you most likely have noticed while reading the above) is that > disclosure of source code does not mean free software, and secondly is > the issue that the license uses very specific terminology referring to > the BerkleyDB (the software that uses this license) and refers mostly to > DB software. Given, disclosure of source code is better (imo) than the > LGPL since it forces the disclosure of the sources (while LGPL only does > so in the case of static linking if there is no exception), and still > gives more freedom for the programmer to choose a license unlike one of > the GPL licenses (despite how much I love them). > > However, if we can find people with the knowledge to write/modify > licenses ('cause I for sure will not be able to do that) then I think > that this license could be modified to fix those two problems (for > example, instead of requiring that code be disclosed, all 4 freedoms > could be required). > > I am not an expert in licensing, which is why I brought this up here. > Hopefully someone here has the ability, time, and will to do this (if it > is possible). (^_^) > > [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepycat_license
A modification can't "improve" the license, because any modification simply makes a new license. This can be mitigated if the old license has an automatic upgrade provision, but sleepycat doesn't. A new license comes with significant downsides, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_proliferation. Without some specific compelling reason an existing license wouldn't work, it's better not to write a new license. I'm glad you are thinking about giving people freedom, unfortunately, I don't think this is a good way to do it. _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
