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Re: Copyleft variation of MIT license



In message <4612A111.4080809@ucsc.edu>, Suraj N. Kurapati <skurapat@ucsc.edu> writes
Anthony W. Youngman wrote:
In message <46113667.50307@ucsc.edu>, Suraj N. Kurapati
<skurapat@ucsc.edu> writes
The MIT license has the following properties (from Ed Burnette's
survey[3] of free software licenses):

 4. Source to bug fixes and modifications must be released? No

I tried to modify the conditions paragraph of the MIT license so
that question 4 (shown above) is given a "Yes" answer.

If that's what you want, look at the LGPL.

Thanks for your suggestion, but it seems I had oversimplified my
intentions when I wrote the above. One of my intentions was to
specify a set of basic requirements for my source code and not go
far as to restrict the code to a particular license. That is, I want
to allow my code to be sucked into any superset license.

In this manner, I feel the LGPL is too restrictive because since it
narrows down its list of superset licenses to only LGPL and GPL.

What do you mean by a "superset licence"?

I'm sure you DON'T mean "allow somebody else to add extra permissions that you didn't". If that's the case, just declare it Public Domain, and that's an end to it.

I hope you don't mean "allow someone to add extra restrictions". That's not copyleft at all.

The whole point about the *L*GPL is that you don't need a "superset" licence. It only applies to *YOUR* code (provided the other guy is careful) so that the other guy can use whatever licence they wish.

Provided they don't muck about with your code, ANY licence can be a sort-of-superset of the LGPL. Just let the LGPL keep your code copyleft, and let other people do what they like with their code (INCLUDING including your code in their programs).

Cheers,
Wol
--
Anthony W. Youngman - anthony@thewolery.demon.co.uk



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