[OpenLayers-Dev] MOTION: simplified license

[Tim Schaub]

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:01 AM, Eric Lemoine
<eric.lemoine at camptocamp.com> wrote:
> 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)

Please elaborate on this.  It says the FSF thinks the 2-clause BSD is
compatible with the GPL.  I don't see a negative there.

> --
> Eric Lemoine
>
> Camptocamp France SAS
> Savoie Technolac, BP 352
> 73377 Le Bourget du Lac, Cedex
>
> Tel : 00 33 4 79 44 44 96
> Mail : eric.lemoine at camptocamp.com
> http://www.camptocamp.com
>



-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo http://opengeo.org/
Expert service straight from the developers.