On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 18:32, Scott Klement wrote: > I'd prefer the BSD license. Why? Because I find all of these legal > technicalities to be a hassle and a nuisance. I want to be protected > against any unforseen lawsuits that may someday develop from the use of > my software... I want to protect my name on the work... I don't want to > restrict what it can be linked with, or how it can be distributed.
The GPL may be more strict, causing code mixing headaches, but there is reason for it. Not all developers are willing to willing to let some fly by night company [1] (or a large 800 lb gorilla) come by, swoop up their code, make a few tweaks to it, then sell it for big bucks while not giving any credit to the original developers and never contributing any code back. The GPL truly is a defense mechanism. If the other authors don't mind the above scenario, then the BSD license would be a good choice. On the other hand, the LGPL is a very nice balance which will solve all the distribution problems, without giving up the farm to whomever wants to harvest your code. [1] Remember the Everybuddy instant messenger fiasco? Or the VirtualDub fiasco? tn5250 probably isn't sexy enough for this to happen, but they illustrate a valid example of how Open Source code can be used abused by companies out to make a quick buck. -- Steve Fox IBM Linux Technology Center http://www.ibm.com/linux/ltc http://k-lug.org _______________________________________________ This is the Linux 5250 Development Project (LINUX5250) mailing list To post a message email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options, visit: http://lists.midrange.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/linux5250 or email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives at http://archive.midrange.com/linux5250.
