[GRASSLIST:10783] Re: [GRASS5] FWD: [OSGeo-Discuss] Incubation Committee / Contributor Agreements]

[Francesco P. Lovergine]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 11:14:57AM +0100, Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 10:52:49AM +0100, Markus Neteler wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 07, 2006 at 10:57:12PM -0700, Michael Barton wrote:
> > > On the other hand, I've already run into problems in trying to establish
> > > links between GRASS and other open source software, using other licenses
> > > (BSD and MIT). Because GRASS is GPL, if the developers of the other software
> > > do not want to license under GPL, we are very limited in the kinds of
> > > linkages we can establish. I understand (I think) the basic principals
> > > though not the legal details.
> 
> 
> > there have been discussions earlier on releasing some libraries
> > under LGPL (you will remember).
> > 
> > What's your suggestions to deal with the issue mentioned by Michael?
> 
> Micheal mentioned BSD and MIT licensed software.
> These two licenses are GPL-compatible.
> There shouldn't be a major issue, should there?
> 

In other contexts there are problems of compatibility with old-BSD (that
with the inpractical advertising clause) and some odd licenses such
as OpenSSL one. In those cases the copyright holders (of GRASS libs)
could issue a specific exception for GRASS libs to allow other parties to
interoperate without problems with other non-GPL compatible free
licenses. See for instance:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-floss-license-exception.html

And yes, new-BSD and MIT/Mozilla are GPL compatible.

-- 
Francesco P. Lovergine