licensing choice [was RE: D/BUS IDL compiler ... #2 ...]

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Havoc,

On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 11:58 -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> The hope is that a new AFL version could preserve some patent protection
> and clarity not found in the LGPL while resolving the concerns of large
> patent-holding companies thus getting the best of all worlds.

	I'm interested in what way the LGPL is considered unclear wrt. the
patent issue. Presumably no large company is going to go with even a
watered-down poison-pill wrt. patents. Is the AFL an 'OSI'[1] creation ?
older versions seem to mention the OSI as some kind of domain authority
in the license screed which is odd. I guess I just don't understand how
yet-another different license helps us; is it intended to be (crudely)
X11 + LGPL patent clause(11) ?

> If contributors want to go ahead and follow up to this mail stating that
> they are OK with relicense to all future versions of AFL _and_ LGPL,
> that should cover us whatever happens.

	I've no idea what future AFL versions might be like; I'm happy to
re-license my (so far somewhat tiny) contributions under X11, leaving
the choice of license up to you though.

> Red Hat can't ship D-BUS with the current licensing either, so rest
> assured the problem will be addressed one way or another.

	Interesting; clearly the sooner the better.

	Regards,

		Michael.
	
[1] - Many people are not keen on the OSI which seems to confer
legitimacy to all manner of dubious licenses under the rather bogus (to
my mind) 'Open' banner.
-- 
 michael at ximian.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot