Re: Licensing Issues

[Adam Fedor]

On Feb 25, 2005, at 2:44 PM, britt creamer wrote:

> First, GNUstep is a fantastic product!  GORM is awesome!  Thanks!
>
> However, from the commercial world, there are two issues that I would  
> like resolved.
>  
> First Issue- GNUstep core (or base with back and gui- the basic  
> libraries).  I've had many discussions with my Intellectual Property  
> Counsel in which our counsel feels "freeware" as "viral", and "it can  
> be a mix bag of goods".  This is because of the mixing of free source  
> code with proprietary software creates risk: the threat of license  
> violations.  After checking GNUstep software (using a grep command  
> searching for Copyright), I found four files that represents my legal  
> counsels concerns:
>
> base/Source/NSNotificationQueue.m         has Copyright 1995, 1996  
> Ovidiu Predescu and Mircea Oancea
> gui/Images/GNUstep_Images_Copyright    has Copyright 1997 Andrew  
> Lindesay
> gui/Source/NSBezierPath.m                     has Copyright 1998 Raph  
> Levien
> gui/Source/tiff.m                                      has 2  
> Copyrights of concern: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 Sam Leffler
>                                                                         
>                                   1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 Silicon  
> Graphics, Inc.

Well some of those are wrong, and should be changed to an FSF  
copyright. Except:

GNUstep Images:  I think I need to clarify this.  I'm not sure of the  
exact status of the copyright itself.
tiff.m: The license for this puts it in the public domain, which is why  
we're still using it without a copyright assignment.  I imagine someone  
could just re-write it, then we wouldn't have the copyright concern.   
It would be tedious, but trivial.

In general, though, the libraries themselves are licensed under the  
LGPL, specifically to avoid the viral nature of most free software  
licenses. Were you aware of this and does this still pose a concern?

> Question for Issue Two:
> Is it possible (only for the GORM application) to change the license  
> to LGPL?
> Or
> Is it possible to change the GPL to allow all Interface Builders  
> (IDE's) the ability create new applications in which the user does not  
> have to release (to the world, to keep it free) their proprietary  
> code?
>
> I would appreciate any assistance anyone in the GNUstep world could  
> give (or within the GNU world).

I think we need to clarify that files created by Gorm are not  
themselves subject to the GPL license.  I think that would answer your  
concerns. It's similar in a sense to creating a document with a word  
processor...