Richard Hayes wrote:
Dear List,
What OSI approved licenses allow for the reincorporation of open source code into propriety products.
BSD obviously. BSD not only allows for it but actively encourages it.
Any others?
I believe the term for this is "non-copyleft". But that actually can be a little deceiving. The LGPL is a copyleft license, but practically, most proprietary software developers have no problem using software under this license as they are free to dynamically link to it. They are required to make available any modifications they make to software under an LGPL license, but this usually isn't a problem as its not the modifications they are trying to keep proprietary.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
is a well maintained list of Free Software licenses. Any that say "non-copyleft" are likely to be compatible with creating proprietary products.
Now, I really do have to ask, why does your software need to be proprietary? If you're trying to keep something secret by not supplying the source code to your program, I recommend that you seek out a "software protection" company to supply you with some hardening of your binary, as compilation != encryption. If you're simply trying to keep "control" over the distribution of your software, I'd recommend you consider providing source code under the same restrictive license as which you provide your proprietary software.
At least then your customers will have some of the advantages of Open Source, even if it is in a look-but-don't-touch style. Apart from giving your software a unique advantage over other proprietary competitors, it would also ease the transition from a closed development model to an open one should your customers ever wise up and begin to value their right to distribute their modifications.
Trent -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
