[GRASS5] why GPL

[B. Byars]

Strobe,

The enforcement of the GRASS code under GPL is the responsibility
of my university ultimately.  Markus and I decided GPL would be the
best for the community.  This has allowed us to protect everyone
developing within GRASS (which our legal team here has already
had to do from a commercial interest which shall remain nameless).
Everyone (especially our counsel's office) know's of the inherent
strengths and weaknesses of GPL, but it is in the best interest of
everyone to use it as the standard.

If you have such concerns, feel free to give me a call at 254-710-6814
or email your number to me and I will call you at my expense.

Take care,

Bruce


strobe anarkhos wrote:

> At 8:34 AM -0800 3/22/01, Eric G. Miller wrote:
> >On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 07:45:43AM -0800, strobe anarkhos wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >At least the GRASS I/O routines shall be released under LGPL. When
> > > >restructuring GRASS, we'll make use of Frank Warmerdam's "libgrass".
> > > >Like that proprietary products will be allowed to read/write GRASS
> > > >databases directly. See the libgrass link at:
> > > > http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/related_projects.html
> > >
> > > I don't consider this a solution.
> >
> >And why exactly should we write code and give it away under a license
> >that allows anyone to appropriate for their profit without returning
> >anything to the GRASS community?  I find this proposal eminently
> >reasonable and I will *not* relicense any code I write under any weak
> >license except for the purpose of providing import/export facilities
> >(i.e. GRASS I/O routines).
>
> Your code is just as protected under the LGPL, and people use GRASS to profit anyway, like using GRASS in their profession. This will become more problematic if somebody wants to use GRASS more pervasively like in a framework many application use.
>
> Nobody can take your code and sell it, it's available to everybody. The problem with the GPL is it isn't available to everybody and it will prevent it from becoming widely used. Instead it will be stuck as a nice stand-alone app instead of a general tool. I don't have any plans to sell GRASStep or any project branching from that work, but I would like to LGPL license it in case somebody wants to write a new tool for it under their own license.
>
> The LGPL is not 'weak', I think you should try to be more open minded.
>
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