Re: [vorlon@netexpress.net: Re: Bug#181969: [mdadams@ece.uvic.ca: Re: JasPer licensing wrt Debian Linux]]
On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, MJ Ray wrote:
> I can appreciate that, but can you please appreciate that your
> software licence is far from ideal?
I do acknowledge that. This is why, in an ideal world, I would have
prefered to have a license without usage restrictions (because such a
license would obviously be less restrictive).
> > I have received a number of
> > rather unkind e-mail from some members of the open-source community.
>
> Please name them.
Please do not take offense. I am not criticizing the members of this forum.
> > As a result, the terms of the JasPer license cannot be dictated by me
> > alone.
>
> If you are a copyright holder, you seem to have a strong negotiating
> position. You can stop JasPer being distributed at all if you get
> undesirable terms, can't you?
Perhaps, I could have refused to allow part of the JasPer code from being
released to the public. This, however, would have been to the
detriment of all, however. I mean, it is better to have something
available than nothing. Many people are using JasPer, in spite of its
non-ideal license. If I had prevented JasPer from being publically
available at all, what would this have really accomplished? After all
of the time that I spent on JasPer, I would like people to be able to
benefit from it. This is only possible if the software is available
to the public.
> Is there case history of this? I mean, I might be held liable for some
> terrorist attack on London, but it seems unlikely. Few others feel it
> necessary to go as far as you have with a patent self-defence clause,
> so it would be interesting to learn more about the reasoning.
I am not a lawyer. So I am not going to pretend to be one. Image
Power and the University of British Columbia have lawyers who were
consulted during in the license drafting process. I trust that these
experienced individuals knew what they were doing.
Sincerely,
Michael
---
Michael Adams, Assistant Professor
Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Engineering, University of Victoria
P.O. Box 3055 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 3P6, CANADA
Tel: +1 250 721 6025, Fax: +1 250 721 6052, Office: EOW 403
E-mail: mdadams@ece.uvic.ca, Web: www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams
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