[Geoprisma-dev] Licensing was: MapFish-trunk in external

[Yves Moisan]

> > Not really.  The Modified BSD licence we are using is compatible with
> > the GPL MapFish is using :
> > http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
> 
> OK, Daniel, please look into this issue.
> 
> I am be wrong, but I think your are not interpreting this correctly.
> 
> What the above says is that these licenses do not contradict the GPL 
> licenses.
> 
> So if you mix GPL code and BSD code you get ............. GPL code.
> That works great for them but not for the people that want BSD licenses.

Stephen,

It may be that the GPL is viral, but there is an issue to be reckoned
with by all projects that use either MapFish (the PSC will have to take
action on the MF licensing soon ...) or ExtJS (like GeoExt).  GeoPrisma
uses ... both.

The ExtJS folks allow the use of their library under the GPL for all
projects that have "open source" licences compatible with the GPL (or
something like that; their exception clause is easily googled).  For all
other uses, you have to buy an ExtJS license.  I don't know what to tell
you at this point, but a license really is in the hands of the beholder.
Those who "exercise" the MapFish license are well the MapFish project.
they are the ones who can sue you if you don't use Mapfish properly.
Odds are in this community of interrelated projects this won't happen.
But you are right there is a potential for trouble.  

> 
> GPL licenses are like a virus, any thing you mix with it becomes GPL.
> There are some licenses that you can NOT mix with GPL because they 
> require actions the are GPL incompatible.
> 
> If I build an GeoPrisma application for a client and he mixes it with 
> his code, he does not what all his code becoming GPL and then has to 
> release his proprietary code as GPL. So GeoPrisma needs to be GPL clean!

IIRC, if he uses his code "for himself" he does not have to give his
mods back to the community.  If your customer starts deploying or
vending his solution, then there's an issue.
> 
> You should not bring anything that is GPL into GeoPrisma which is under 
> a BSD license or it will make GeoPrisma into a GPL license.

Saying that would be like saying "abandon MapFish and GeoExt" which
makes no sense now at least in terms of our codebase.  The only thing we
can do is work on the MF license : maybe add an exception for GPL
compatible licenses ?  Remember : GeoExt has a modified BSD license, but
it uses ExtJS behind under the GPL *with* the explicit exception clause
provided by the ExtJS folks.  So if anyone were to turn a GeoExt
application into some proprietary app, there would be a violation of
ExtJS's exception clause, I believe.  We'll see with the MapFish PSC in
January.

Cheers,

Yves


> 
> One of the OpenSource selection criteria that my clients put on me is NO 
> GPL code.
> 
> That means if someone has a cool GPL thingy that you would like to have 
> in GeoPrisma then you need to recreate the functionality in clean code 
> that does not use the GPL'd code.
> 
> This unfortunately means that you can not use mapfish code.
> 
> There is one possible angle to this that might let you get by that is it 
> might be possible to convince people that the client JS code can be GPL 
> as long as the service code is BSD. But it muddies the water and makes 
> it harder to convince people to use the product. And you run the risk of 
> something innocently polluting you server side code with something that 
> is GPL and came along with some client-side piece. I am not a lawyer.
> 
> If you need help or another opinion Frank W. is probably someone that 
> understands this pretty well.
> 
> My 2 cents,
>    -Steve
>