Re: PL vs. BSD License
On Mon, Aug 02, 2010 at 08:29:52AM +0200, Alexander Burger wrote: Hi all, as this discussion popped up recently and in the past, and will surely pop up in the future: What do you think if PicoLisp were released under the BSD license instead of GPL? I would love it. I could imagine embedding PicoLisp in some applications. Ideologically, I prefer the GPL. It guarantees that freedom propagates. But it does this by cutting down on freedom, so it is schizophrenic. I used to compare the situation with freedom in a society: A society should not give an individual member so much freedom that he can make himself a dictator and thus destroy freedom. But this comparison is wrong. Using free software in a non-free project doesn't decrease its freedom; it just doesn't increase it the way the GPL tries to enforce. So is this just much ado about nothing? Even the FSF argues for less restrictive licenses than the GPL in some situations. For example the GLIBC has a less restrictive license, and they have the LGPL for purposes like this. They argue, that when adoption otherwise is unlikely, you should use the LGPL. This is the case, when there is a large body of proprietary code out there, such as when the GLIBC was created. If it had not allowed anything but GPL programs linked to it, nobody would have used. So it could be argued that you are helping distributing state-of-the-art embeddeble open source lisp by going to a less restrictive license. Of course, the FSF would be less happy if you went with MIT/X11/BSD than with the LGPL, but it is up to you. And the X11 license or 2-clause BSD is the most commercial friendly. best regards, Jakob -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
Re: PL vs. BSD License
Hi Alex, all, On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Alexander Burger a...@software-lab.de wrote: Hi all, as this discussion popped up recently and in the past, and will surely pop up in the future: What do you think if PicoLisp were released under the BSD license instead of GPL? i go for BSD. My reason for asking this is simple: On several occasions I experienced that the acceptance of PicoLisp is limited by the GPL. Companies are reluctant to use it because they are afraid of being forced to publish their little secrets. Their fear is sometimes rational and sometimes not, but the effects are the same. For me it is critical, as my economic survival depends on it. the way i understand it (from reading all of the pros and cons posts of GPL vs BSD over the net for quite some time) is that the GPL forces you to publish changes when you want to distribute the code outside of the company. the most clear statement i have read somewhere tells me the GPL is a distribution license. i think that captures the spirit of the GPL. or most of it. Ideologically, I prefer the GPL. It guarantees that freedom propagates. But it does this by cutting down on freedom, so it is schizophrenic. I used to compare the situation with freedom in a society: A society should not give an individual member so much freedom that he can make himself a dictator and thus destroy freedom. But this comparison is wrong. Using free software in a non-free project doesn't decrease its freedom; it just doesn't increase it the way the GPL tries to enforce. So is this just much ado about nothing? this is a complex issue and i am not an expert. my additional arguments would be: 1) the BSD license does not force one to publish changes. good for companies. the GPL does not enforce this too *unless* you distribute your changes to pre-existing GPL code. 2) the BSD license still ensures that the code remains free. the GPL does not guarantee that changes in the pre-existing code will be made publicly available (see point 1). 3) the GPL is complex. so many ifs. i'm not keen on using complex things. best regards, eyan PS: hat tip to Alex for PicoLisp and bringing this issue up in the list. -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
Re: PL vs. BSD License
Hi all, Hi all, as this discussion popped up recently and in the past, and will surely pop up in the future: What do you think if PicoLisp were released under the BSD license instead of GPL? Why not? It would be great to see PicoLisp under BDS license -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
Re: PL vs. BSD License
Hi all, Hi all, as this discussion popped up recently and in the past, and will surely pop up in the future: What do you think if PicoLisp were released under the BSD license instead of GPL? Why not? It would be great to see PicoLisp under BDS license Oops, sorry, I mean BSD -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
Re: PL vs. BSD License
Hello. Does the GPL affect code that I write that runs on PicoLisp, or just changes to the PicoLisp interpreter? If only changes to the interpreter are affected, than GPL is the way to go as far as I am concerned. However, I should add that many large companies (at least in the US) are irrationally terrified of anything GPL. It is very annoying. - dan On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Mansur Mamkin mmam...@mail.ru wrote: Hi all, Hi all, as this discussion popped up recently and in the past, and will surely pop up in the future: What do you think if PicoLisp were released under the BSD license instead of GPL? Why not? It would be great to see PicoLisp under BDS license Oops, sorry, I mean BSD -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
Re: PL vs. BSD License
Hi Dan, all, On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 7:24 PM, Daniel Elliott danelliotts...@gmail.com w= rote: Hello. Does the GPL affect code that I write that runs on PicoLisp, or just changes to the PicoLisp interpreter? picoLisp is made up of 1) the interpreter and 2) libraries and support files that come with the distribution, ie the *.l files. If only changes to the interpreter are affected, than GPL is the way to go as far as I am concerned. if the interpreter were GPL and the support files were BSD, then your code would not be affected. with this i am sure. however, if you use any of the .l files (which is GPL), is your code also forced to be GPL? i don't know. However, I should add that many large companies (at least in the US) are irrationally terrified of anything GPL. =A0It is very annoying. - dan On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Mansur Mamkin mmam...@mail.ru wrote: Hi all, Hi all, as this discussion popped up recently and in the past, and will surely pop up in the future: What do you think if PicoLisp were released unde= r the BSD license instead of GPL? Why not? It would be great to see PicoLisp under BDS license Oops, sorry, I mean BSD -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=3dunsubscribe -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=3dunsubscribe -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
Re: PL vs. BSD License
El Mon, 2 Aug 2010 15:20:06 +0800 Edwin Eyan Moragas e...@yndy.org escribi=C3=B3: Hi Alex, all, =20 On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Alexander Burger a...@software-lab.de wrote: Hi all, as this discussion popped up recently and in the past, and will surely pop up in the future: What do you think if PicoLisp were released under the BSD license instead of GPL? =20 i go for BSD. =20 My reason for asking this is simple: On several occasions I experienced that the acceptance of PicoLisp is limited by the GPL. Companies are reluctant to use it because they are afraid of being forced to publish their little secrets. Their fear is sometimes rational and sometimes not, but the effects are the same. For me it is critical, as my economic survival depends on it. =20 the way i understand it (from reading all of the pros and cons posts of GPL vs BSD over the net for quite some time) is that the GPL forces you to publish changes when you want to distribute the code outside of the company. the most clear statement i have read somewhere tells me the GPL is a distribution license. i think that captures the spirit of the GPL. or most of it. =20 Like you said, the GPL is a distribution license, it only applies when the code is distributed, it does not force you to *publish* the changes or absolutely _anything_, it forces you to give the changes to the *recipient* of the modified binaries, which most of the time will be the same company anyway (a datacenter move for example). Pico's architecture doesn't seem very ready for embedding, but if you alex want to go in that direction, i'd suggest LGPL for the interpreter code, as Guile uses. Or in any way right now, LGPL or BSD for the standard library, to prevent linking issues that could arise as Edwin pointed out earlier. I could add too, a BSD implementation of the PLIO (that i'm coding myself right now) Ideologically, I prefer the GPL. It guarantees that freedom propagates. But it does this by cutting down on freedom, so it is schizophrenic. I used to compare the situation with freedom in a society: A society should not give an individual member so much freedom that he can make himself a dictator and thus destroy freedom. But this comparison is wrong. Using free software in a non-free project doesn't decrease its freedom; it just doesn't increase it the way the GPL tries to enforce. So is this just much ado about nothing? =20 this is a complex issue and i am not an expert. my additional arguments would be: =20 1) the BSD license does not force one to publish changes. good for companies. the GPL does not enforce this too *unless* you distribute your changes to pre-existing GPL code. =20 2) the BSD license still ensures that the code remains free. the GPL does not guarantee that changes in the pre-existing code will be made publicly available (see point 1). =20 The BSD doesn't guarantee that either, in fact BSD never guarantees that the changes will go back. 3) the GPL is complex. so many ifs. i'm not keen on using complex things. In that one i agree, the GPL is a huge legal document, and as such so many people don't read it before talking about it. =20 best regards, =20 eyan =20 PS: hat tip to Alex for PicoLisp and bringing this issue up in the list. Cheers, Jos=C3=A9 -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
Re: PL vs. BSD License
Hi Alex, For me it is critical, as my economic survival depends on it. Do you mean that your economic survival depends on changing the licence to BSD? Then yes, because without you there is no PicoLisp;-) What do you think if PicoLisp were released under the BSD license instead of GPL? http://www.linfo.org/linus.html In what Torvalds now admits was one of his best decisions, he decided to release Linux under the GPL (GNU General Public License)... Although I wouldn't mind a BSD style licence. It's mostly your sweat you're giving away;-) There are also other licences like Lisp Lesser General Public Licence http://www.cliki.net/LLGPL http://opensource.franz.com/preamble.html which is used in some Common Lisp projects and it does address some concerns specific to Lisp development. I'm not a lawyer so I can't advice on licensing issues. Cheers, Tomas -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
Re: PL vs. BSD License
Hi Tomas, For me it is critical, as my economic survival depends on it. Do you mean that your economic survival depends on changing the licence to BSD? Then yes, because without you there is no PicoLisp;-) No, it does not depend directly on the licensing issue ;-) But on PicoLisp in general, and its acceptance. http://www.linfo.org/linus.html In what Torvalds now admits was one of his best decisions, he decided to release Linux under the GPL (GNU General Public License)... If you look at the whole sentence, however, ... under the GPL (GNU General Public License) rather than under the more restrictive license that he had earlier planned. The BSD license is _less_ restricted. Although I wouldn't mind a BSD style licence. OK, thanks. Does this also include your XML stuff and other input? It's mostly your sweat you're giving away;-) Do you think that we would _lose_ anything? Giving away per se is not bad. Cheers, - Alex -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picol...@software-lab.de?subject=unsubscribe
