[OpenLayers-Dev] MOTION: simplified license

[christopher.schmidt at nokia.com]

On May 10, 2011, at 12:16 PM, ext Eric Lemoine wrote:

> On Tuesday, May 10, 2011, Tim Schaub <tschaub at opengeo.org> wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Sorry Tim. I was confused. +1 from me.

+1.

-- Chris

> -- 
> Eric Lemoine
> 
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