Re: [Boost-users] [license] Why is the Boost license not an official Open Source license?

From: Markus Schöpflin (markus.schoepflin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-07-28 04:23:51

Gennaro Prota wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:46:10 +0200, Markus Schöpflin
> <markus.schoepflin_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> 
>> Huh, boost is not free software? AFAICT, the license allows all the four 
>> freedoms. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for a list of 
>> those. So why should boost not fall into the category of free software?
> 
> Hi Markus,
> 
> not sure whether you replied after or before my auto-followup :-) In
> any case, yes, it allows all four freedoms and thus qualify, by
> definition. However it also allows the freedom to "remove freedom" on
> a specific derivative work: it is non-copylefted free software.

Before, but with a non-subscribed mail address, so it took some iterations 
on my side and moderator approval to get the reply to the ML. :-)

Anyway, you are of course right by saying that boost qualifies as 
non-copylefted free software. If this is more or less than just free 
software is a philosophical question. I was just mystified by your original 
comment claiming that boost is *not* free.

> This can be seen as "it gives more freedom", as Brian suggests, or "it
> doesn't preserve freedom", according to one's one beliefs and/or
> logic. As a matter of fact, that allows cases such as X11, which has
> non-free versions being the only ones that work on some hardware
> (making it non-free for users of that hardware).

Yes, but it also allows for cases where (like in our case) we are using 
boost in commercial closed source products without too much legal hassle. 
This would have never been possible if boost was copylefted. The benefit 
for the community in this case is that boost is regression tested on a more 
exotic platform (Tru64/cxx/gcc) on a regular base. This may be a bit 
exaggerated, but when boost would be copylefted, there possibly would be no 
up to date support for Tru64.

Markus

PS: Someone recently posted a link to an excellent article regarding these 
issues to the boost developer mailing list. See 
http://www.ipinfoblog.com/archives/Open%20Source%20Legal%20Issues.pdf