Re: is the Clearthought Software License free?

[jochen georges <gnugeo@gnugeo.de>]

hello,

i send this email on friday, but may be there was a problem. so i send it 
again, 'hope it is not impolite.

i asked the author, how to understand the licence,
here is the correspondence:


# my question ---------------------------------------------------------

hello,

i would like to use "TableLayout" in a free software project.
but i'm not sure how to understand the licence:

"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted ..."

sounds good :-)

"The original software may not be altered."

sounds bad :-(

"However, the classes provided may be subclasses as long as the subclasses are 
not packaged in the info.clearthought package or any subpackage of
info.clearthought."

do you mean, i can change the TableLayout-Code, if i change the 
directory-structure? like "info.Foo.layout.TableLayout" ??

i would be very happy, if "TableLayout" is free software. 

thanks in advance for your answer.

beste gruesse
jochen georges
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# his answer -----------------------------------------------------------------

Basically, don't redistribute altered source files in the info.clearthought 
package.  Feel free to customize TableLayout by subclassing it.  You can 
distribute any of your subclasses, which should be any package other than 
info.clearthought.  For example,

package com.myCompanyDomain.layouts;
public class MyCustomizedLayout extends info.clearthought.TableLayout {...}

TableLayout is royalty free.  It is also intellectually free in that since 
everything is either public or protected, you can alter anything by 
subclassing or composition.  So there's no vender or design lock-in.  The 
only thing you can't do is fork the original source.  You can fork any 
subclasses you make though.  Since all fields and methods are public or 
protected, you couldn't do anything via forking that you couldn't already do 
by subclassing.

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i think, he just wants to avoid that there is "external" code under his 
name "clearthought".

so, what do you say?
is that free?  

thanks for any hint.

beste gruesse
jochen georges

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