Re: Extending and releasing open source software
To the OP: IANAL, etc.
My question upon reading the initial post was whether the MIT license
allows changing the licensing terms? Is it like the BSD no attribution
clause license in that respect? If so, then licensing under the GPL3 is
likely legal. If not, then that opens an entire can of legal worms.
I would be very careful to assure that whatever action the OP takes does
not result in legal action from the copyright holder/licensor. This may
be a proper question for the Free Software Foundation. Their advice
is likely more sound than the opinions you'd get from a user mailing
list (mine included). IIRC, there is also a Debian-legal list that you
could bounce this idea off of. Whatever you do, don't make your code
public until you believe you have a firm legal standing,
* On 2011 15 Mar 08:23 -0500, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> On 2011-03-15 07:22:50 Nick Douma wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >On 03/14/2011 06:15 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> >> On 2011-03-14 11:12:35 Nick Douma wrote:
> >>> I have a question about developing software and licenses. I have taken a
> >>> MIT-licensed library (https://github.com/peej/tonic), and modified and
> >>> extended it. The result is a REST library for PowerDNS, which I would
> >>> like to release under GPL. However, it is not clear to me how I should
> >>> do it.
> >>
> >> Why not keep the existing MIT license?
> >
> >Because the GPL license is a better match for the project.
>
> How so? Using the MIT license makes it easier for you to share changes with
> upstream. It also makes it easier for users to switch between your fork and
> upstream. It also gives your users the same freedoms 0-3 that the GPL does.
>
> I'm a big fan of the GPL, especially version 3, and it's variants. I just
> don't understand your exact motivations for breaking compatibility with the
> existing library. What are you trying to allow / prevent?
I'm guessing here, but speaking only for myself, assuming the MIT
license is similar to the BSD no attribution clause license, unless the
modification is trivial, I don't wish to have my code used by a
proprietary interest without compensation. Not that my code is world
class, mind you. With the GPL that compensation exists in the form of
later contributors making their code available under the same terms I
provided it to them. The BSD license does not provide the protect to
the code I wish to see it have so I can understand the OP's desire for
the same, assuming he has the same motivation.
- Nate >>
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