[Just a bit of history; I am explicitly abstaining on which license is "best".]
On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Kirill Smelkov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 11:42:47PM +0100, Ondrej Certik wrote: >> anyone can make any modification and do what he >> wants with it, including keeping it secret. > What's your rationale on this? Why you need the > right to keep modifications of sympy secret? > Is there any reason this is good for sympy? (1) Some people won't use the library unless they have that right. They may never exercise that right. They probably won't exercise it except on small portions. So getting them to use it (and contribute back on the rest) is useful. (2) Even if the right makes no sense, it is still important to some people, for reasons *I* can't quite explain. The GPL lets you make modifications and keep them secret, so long as you don't distribute the result. You can even put the result behind a web service, and let others use it -- so long as you don't let them install it themselves, the GPL doesn't open the code. That seems like a pretty stupid loophole to most people, but the FSF has been very clear that it is intentional. The Aladdin Ghostscript License did say that exposing the modifications as a service would mean they had to be public. They needed special permission from the FSF to add that restriction to their GNU-like license, because it *is* a restriction. The FSF specifically approved it only for that one case, not in general, and only as an experiment -- which they chose not to extend. -jJ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
