At 12:00 AM -0700 on 7/10/99, Michael Fair wrote:
>My two bits on the licensing thing.
>
>I am in favor of building an OpenTalk interpreter like an
>embedded Metacard product and putting it under the
>LGPL.
>
>Then with that LGPL'd product building the OpenCard
>program under the GPL and creating a well defined plugin
>architecture, adding the necessary object heirarchical
>messaging systems. Plugins could be commercial as they
>are their own source code trees independent of the
>OpenCard product and if someone wanted to create a
>competing commercial product that used the OpenTalk
>engine they could, because the engine is under the LGPL.
But once OpenCard is under the GPL, one could not create a standalone
except if it were also under the GPL. One could not use any icons,
resources, etc. from OpenCard is a stack unless that stack were too under
the GPL. The GPL spreads like a virus.
>
>If people just wanted to add some expensive features to
>the OpenCard product and weren't able to OpenSource the
>extension they could via the plugin architecture. By
>placing the OpenCard product under the GPL it prevents
>commercial developers from stealing the OpenCard code
>and giving us nothing. It doesn't stop them from selling it,
>support licensing, or anything else.
But it does stop them from making standalones!
>Developers could still
>retain control over the licensing of their scripts because
>those scripts are not part of the source code base and are
>also their own entity, any licensing for products developed
>with OpenCard are of course at the discretion of the
>developer because the interpreter they are using as
>their "run-time" is under the LGPL.
The interpreter, if incorporated in a GPL product (opencard) would have to
excercise the convert to gpl clause; that is, the Interpreter that came
with OpenCard would of neccessity be under the GPL, not the LGPL.
