On Oct 12, 2007, at 10:12 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
DavidThis is the second refence to the HPL in the last few days where you have expressed your unhappiness with it. I have read it through several times and can find nothing onerous in it (unlike the no commercial use clauses insome).While I find the Apache license ideal, I myself get rather aggrevated when people use this Apache Licensed software for their commercial enterprisesand never contribute anything back. I consider them to be parasites.Anyway, can you describe specifically what you are not comfortable with incase I have missed some lawyer stuff?
Chris Howe described this fairly well. To add to what he said related to the onerous nature of the HPL:
1. it is not an OSI (opensource.org) approved license, for many that means it is NOT "open source"
2. in addition to the copy-left annoyance that Chris described and that is well known because of the GPL licenses, the HPL very clearly adds on a constraint that software made available over the internet IS making it available publicly (which is unclear, and often argued against for the GPL); that means that if you write ecommerce software based on HPL licensed stuff, you have to release even your templates and everything under HPL; also to make this more fun it is common that configuration files and seed and other data files are also HPL licensed, which means technically you HAVE TO release you configuration changes under the HPL (or buy a commercial license to avoid it all...), and that can include account names and passwords and encryption keys and all sorts of other things that are not just trade secrets but security holes
In other words, it's a mess, and I think only those who have not really though through the implications for the business software industry would think of it as okay and low risk to use.
So yeah, that's why I don't like GPL or anything like it (especially not HPL) for an open source project like OFBiz. The only reason most groups want to use it is because they are companies and not communities, and they want to market as open source but still have a software licensing revenue. For OFBiz I have always wanted it to be a community-driven project, and being in the ASF now really helps us all do the more successfully.
-David
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