[OpenLayers-Dev] MOTION: simplified license

[Eric Lemoine]

On Tuesday, May 10, 2011, Tim Schaub <tschaub at opengeo.org> wrote:
> Hey-
>
> We've had discussions previously about adopting a license that has
> more widespread use than our modified BSD license.  The motivation for
> making a change is increase the likelihood that others can use
> OpenLayers without having to direct specific licensing questions to a
> very small pool of people (perhaps a pool of one).
>
> The 2-clause BSD, referred to as "Simplified BSD License" or "FreeBSD
> License" looks good to me
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#2-clause).
>
> This license differs from our current license
> (http://svn.openlayers.org/trunk/openlayers/license.txt) in a number
> of ways:
>
> 1) The 2-clause license omits the non-endorsement clause.  Our current
> license says that nobody can use the OpenLayers name to endorse
> products that use OpenLayers without specific written permission.  To
> my knowledge, we have given specific written permission once.  There
> are enough other uses of the OpenLayers name in promoting software
> that uses OpenLayers that I think we are not going to enforce this
> non-endorsement clause.
>
> 2) The 2-clause license doesn't contain any language about patent
> rights.  Our current language about patent rights is not included in
> other common forms of the BSD (OpenLayers and FeatureServer are the
> two uses I could quickly find).  Removing this specific language would
> align our license with licenses used by many other projects - reducing
> the chance of licensing questions that are specific to our project.
>
> I'm open to hearing proposals to use another license.
>
> I'm +1 on changing to the 2-clause BSD.

Tim, I'm just concerned about this regarding the 2-clause BSD:

"The Free Software Foundation, which refers to the license as the
FreeBSD License, states that it is compatible with the GNU GPL."

(extracted from the wikipedia page)

-- 
Eric Lemoine

Camptocamp France SAS
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