[mapserver-users] Question about the License.

[Martin, Daniel]

Thanks very much for the replies guys.

Based on what you have told me and what I have read, MapServer's license
appears structured perfect for adoption by businesses.  Open Source is
great, but the GPL and lesser GPL are often too restrictive for use by
businesses world.  Apache shows that credit for the original authors can
actually be promoted by an unrestrictive license.

Thanks,
Dan Martin

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Lime [mailto:steve.lime at dnr.state.mn.us]
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 4:03 PM
To: morissette at dmsolutions.ca; warmerdam at pobox.com
Cc: Martin, Daniel; mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
Subject: Re: [mapserver-users] Question about the License.


I believe the UMN made the change because "substantial portions" is on
the vague side. This license is not intended to get in anyone's way, but
to ensure that credit is given where credit is due.

Steve

Stephen Lime
Data & Applications Manager

Minnesota DNR
500 Lafayette Road
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-297-2937

>>> Daniel Morissette <morissette at dmsolutions.ca> 06/18/02 08:38AM >>>
Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> 
> The license appears to be a stock MIT/X style license.  You may not
> "relicense" the provided source modules, nor may you hold the
copyright
> holder liable for anything.  Other than that you can do whatever you
want,
> including applying any license you choose to derivitive works,
binaries
> built straight from the source and so forth.  This is the same
license I
> use for GDAL.
> 


Just for the record, the MapServer license is not exactly a stock
MIT/X
license... they modified the second paragraph.

The second paragraph of the official MIT/X license says:

 "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be 
  included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

and in the MapServer license it was modified to say:

 "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
  included in all copies of this Software or works derived from
  this Software."

I don't think the modification affects our right to use, modify,
redistribute, etc., but I'm not a lawyer, so ...

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
 Daniel Morissette               morissette at dmsolutions.ca 
 DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ 
------------------------------------------------------------
  Don't put for tomorrow what you can do today, because if 
      you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.