Richard Hayes wrote:
What OSI approved licenses allow for the reincorporation of open source code into propriety products.
All of them do.
Before OSI somewhat standardised free software licensing terms there used to be many wacko licenses. Some licenses prohibited all commercial use, many others prohibited use in particular fields, such as military applications. Licenses with such restrictions can't gain OSI approval.
Some OSI-approved licenses have terms and conditions which may not fit your business plans, such as terms which require you to offer licensed source code and any dervied works code to your customers; or terms which force you to grant licenses to patents you may hold which relate to the licensed software.
As an example, I've used GPLed code in propietary products, as have Cisco, Intel, Microsoft and many other firms. Most companies meet that licenses T&Cs by shipping the sources to to the GPLed part of the product on a CD enclosed with the product. The only trap for young players is that if you make software updates available via the web you also need to repeat the offer of the source code with the software update. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
