Re: JpGraph License Question [From the author]
JpGraph <jpgraph@aditus.nu>:
> My goal with some kind of license setup for JpGraph is
I'm not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice.
The obvious thing to do is to license the library under the GPL to
everyone and offer an alternative non-free licence to companies that
want to use it as part of a non-free product.
> * have a clear no-nonsense license
You might not call the GPL "clear", but it's one of the best known
free software licences.
> * to make the library free for all open source users
A GPL library cannot be used with all free software, but it can be
used with free software that is licensed under the GPL or a compatible
licence. See:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
> * to guarantee that it stays free and that the library is not
> re-packaged and then sold by some other companies.
The GPL is designed to keep software free. It doesn't forbid people
from selling copies, but it does prevent the standard business model
in which lots of identical copies are sold for a price signifantly
greater than the cost of copying. Any program that uses a GPL library
must itself be licensed under the GPL and is therefore itself free
software.
> * to be able to have some means of revenue (otherwise I wouldn't be
> able to develop the library).
Licensing something under the GPL does not prevent you selling an
alternative licence to commercial users. However, if you do that, then
you cannot incorporate other people's GPL code into the library.
There may be some GPL-incompatible free software projects that want to
use the library. If you license it under the GPL you could perhaps
grant some of those projects a special exception case by case.
Edmund
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