Re: cc65 license check -- main or non-free?
Matthew Palmer wrote:
And we're dead in the water already. That's a typical non-commercial
clause, which means it's destined for non-free at best.
Yeah, that's what I suspected, but after looking through the source archive
I'm starting to wonder if this even applies to anything. (See below.)
*snip*
OK, although I think a sneaky lawyer could argue that source code doesn't
need to be provided for modified versions, as the 'provided' clause could be
taken as being the sole proviso on modified distribution. This licence
wasn't written by a lawyer, was it?
This might also not apply any more...
*snip*
In acknowledgment of this copyright, I will place my own changes to the
compiler under the same copyright.
Is this something that the modifier is supposed to affirm or something?
Sorry, the origin of that isn't too clear from the way I pasted it in. The
"original" license ends just above that line, and that's a statement from
Ullrich.
*snip*
All of that seems OK. The wording on "alter it and redistribute it freely"
is a bit nerve-wracking, though -- that 'freely' could mean 'without
charge', so the phrase could be read as "alter it and redistribute it
without charge", which would be NC again. Also, the permission to
distribute modified versions isn't *explicitly* given. If this copyright
holder plays the UWash game, it's suddenly too-non-free-for-non-free.
Well, that second license is an almost verbatim copy of the zlib license.
The author even says so on the site. So I'm not worried about this part too
much.
Now the interesting part:
I searched through the source archive, and I couldn't find a *single file*
that was actually licensed under the "old" cc65 license, they were all
licensed under the new one. I don't know if this means he rewrote the entire
thing from scratch. I could dig up the code for the original, 1989 cc65
compiler (I've seen it on a few emulation related sites) and check for
similarities... I think I will, actually, now I'm pretty curious.
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