[boost] Re: License discution (Was: The Binder Library)

From: Valentin Bonnard (Bonnard.V_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-11-05 14:47:58

jaakko.jarvi_at_[hidden] wrote:

> The library is currently under a kind of an Artistic License.
> 
> Basically it can be used freely for any purpose, commercial or
> non-commercial, it can be changed freely as well.
> The only restriction is, that if changes made to BL are distributed
> publicly, they must be clearly marked at the source, and the copyright
> holder is entitled to incorporate the changes to the original library.
> 
> My questions are:
> 
>         Do you find the library would a suiable addition to Boost repository?

Certainly

>         Does the license cause problems?

The artistic license doesn't cause as much problem as the 
BSD license, LGPL (or even worse, the GPL).

The only problem I see is that it is long. In itself it's 
workable but imagine what happens when someone builts a 
program using many small libraries, which is the kind of 
thing we want to promote (as opposed to one massive 
``framework''): they have as many different licenses as 
libraries. If the licenses are the same except for the 
copyright owner, and they allow free use, then this is fine. 
If they are all differents, it may be difficult to understand 
their interactions. With copyleft, it may even be impossible 
to legally link them together.

Boost' license policy is there specifically to avoid such 
nightmares.

(See http://www.boost.org/more/faq.htm for Boost' policies.)

That said, and IMO, the artistic licence could be accepted 
as it causes no copyleft problem and library code is usable 
unmodified.

-- 
Valentin Bonnard