Re: [boost] Boost licensing information

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost licensing information
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-04-12 20:55:51

> This issue often confuses users. Especially non native speakers for
> whom all that perfectly measured legal words make absolutely no sense!
> Seriously, I need to spend about an hour to understand what a license
> is talking about. And I *know* the restrictions, it's just
> unbelievably hard to convert legal words to understanding.
> 
> What's worse - BSL is not a very popular license. There's probably
> only 1-2 pages in non-English languages about BSL on wikipedia. Other
> wiki pages redirect from BSL to Boost libraries. So for example I can
> get no information about BSL in Russian. I've tried twice to translate
> BSL to Russian. Both times the wiki page was removed as a
> minor/useless topic.

Also, translations prepared by non-lawyers are problematic.

> Could we somehow solve the issue in Boost by
> * also distributing Boost under the MIT license (super extremely very
> close license)
> * or by summarizing the differences between BSL and MIT in simple
> English like here http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/44116

I would *really* prefer the EUPL over the MIT licence. The EUPL comes in
22 languages and was written to work well in any of the major legal
systems in the world, including Russia's.

I'm currently strongly considering placing Outcome and all my Boost like
libraries under the EUPL licence. It far better matches the "Licence
requirements" at http://www.boost.org/development/requirements.html than
the Boost licence does. And it comes in 22 translations as prepared by
lawyers in those languages, and those translations have undergone
multiple rounds of peer review and checking. It is a far superior
licence for Boost code.

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/eupl/og_page/european-union-public-licence-eupl-v11

Niall

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