Re: The QPL
Richard Braakman wrote:
> Peter S Galbraith wrote:
>
> > The author wants it to be free, but would like to be able to use
> > contributed patches or code in a sister plotting package that may
> > eventually be sold.
>
> Hmm. Patches are usually submitted under the same license as the
> original work. I can't think of any exceptions I've ever seen.
> So if that is all he wants, an X-like license would be fine.
That would allow him to do whatever he wanted with the patches,
including incorporating them into commercial software, right?
But that would allow anyone to do the same. He wants to avoid
someone taking his work (without compensation), slapping a GUI on
top on it and selling it as a Windows app or something. The X
license would allow that.
He was almost ready to use the GPL, but I pointed out that once
people send in patches his work is no longer his alone. He can't
turn around, modify the work and sell it without hunting through
for all patches and re-writing them.
We thought the QPL would be better for this reason but perhaps
another less restrictive license would do also.
> I bet that would attract more people than the QPL would.
> The QPL is patches-only;
We thought of _modifying_ the QPL (say to remove the patch
clause) but the author thought that would create yet another
license for people to parse, etc.
> I would certainly avoid any program
> under that license.
That's certainly your choice, but rarely the upstream author's
loss. This program has been `available' to the oceanographic
community for close to ten years, but 99% of it (or more) is
still the upstream author's code. I don't think that the threat
of reduced hacker code input is an argument for him since it
hasn't been a driving factor so far.
Is the patch clause your major hurdle? Or the fact that he could
use your 0.1% contribution for profit?
(Might as well fix this now, I just realized I compiled it
without netCDF support so will need to upload again soon.)
Peter
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