Fwd: [DotGNU]licensing of fox toolkit

[James Michael DuPont]

this might be the right list for this discussion,
anyone awake?

--- David Sugar <dyfet@ostel.com> wrote:
> From David Sugar Thu Jan  9 04:04:03 2003
> From: David Sugar <dyfet@ostel.com>
> To: jeroen@fox-toolkit.org
> CC: rms@gnu.org, bkuhn@gnu.org, developers@dotgnu.org
> Subject: [DotGNU]licensing of fox toolkit
> Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 07:04:03 -0500
> 
> I have read through your licensing page on fox, with your recent
> changes as of 
> August of last year, and I have found these changes contradictory and
> 
> confusing.  You start from a basic LGPL license, and then state the
> following 
> on your site:
> 
> FOX basically follows the standard GNU Lesser General Public License
> (LGPL). 
> Because of repeated questions on this topic, it has become apparent
> that many 
> people still had a number of uncertainties about licensing issues.
> 
> Also, a number of stipulations in the GNU Lesser Public License
> statement have 
> evidently been an impediment to truely wide-spread adoption of the
> FOX 
> Library.
> 
> Thus, the intent of the License Addendum has been to provide
> clarification of 
> a number of obscure issues in the GNU Lesser General Public License,
> and to 
> relax a few of its stipulations with an eye to solving a couple of
> practical 
> issues.
> 
> Below follows the GNU Lesser Public License, followed by the FOX
> Library 
> License addendum.
> 
> < INSERTED >
>                            ADDENDUM TO LICENSE
>                               August 2002
> 
>                 Copyright (C) 2002 Jeroen van der Zijp.
> 
>         Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
>      of this license addendum document, but changing it is not
> allowed.
> 
> 
> FOX Toolkit Library License Agreement.
> 
> 
> 0. The FOX Toolkit Library ("The Library") is licensed under GNU
> Lesser
> General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation,
> version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version,
> with the following additional conditions.  The following conditions
> take precedence over any conditions or restrictions stipulated by the
> Lesser General Public License insofar as a conflict exists.
> 
> 1. The FOX Toolkit Library License Agreement ("License") covers only
> the FOX Toolkit Library ("The Library").  Other libraries which the
> Library may use are covered by their own respective licenses.
> 
> 2. Modification of the configure scripts, makefiles, or installation
> tools of the Library to support a specific platform does not
> constitute
> creating a modified or derivative work based on the Library.
> 
> 3. Subclassing from Objects or Widgets supplied by the Library
> involves
> no modifications to the source code of the Library itself, and
> consequently,
> subclassing from Objects and Widgets does not constitute creating a
> modified
> or derivative work based on the Library.
> 
> 4. Statically linking of a copy of the Library against any work using
> the
> Library, i.e. the inclusion of (parts of) the Library into a program
> or
> binary, is functionally equivalent to a work using the Library by
> linking
> to it dynamically, and therefore does not constitute creating a
> modified
> or derivative work based on the Library.
> 
> 5. Otherwise, if the work is a derivative of the Library, you may
> distribute the object code for the work under the terms of the GNU
> Lesser
> General Public License.  Any executables containing that work also
> may
> be distributed under the Lesser General Public License whether or not
> they
> are linked directly with the Library itself.
> 
> 6. Programs or binaries linked with the Library must be identified as
> such
> by including, in the Documentation or by other means (for example in
> the
> About Box or Online Help), the following statement:
> 
> "This software uses the FOX Toolkit Library
> (http://www.fox-toolkit.org)."
> 
> < END >
> 
> I do understand that to actually get an GNU LGPL "effect" in a C++
> class 
> frameworks it may be nessisary to have some kind of addendum stating
> what is 
> not construed as a derived work by the author, since one has to deal
> with 
> templates, inline headers, and inheritence, all of which may be
> construed 
> under copyright and our current legal understanding as it may apply
> to 
> software as a "derivitive" work in ways that linking of pure C
> libraries are 
> not, and this may also relate to specific issues of copyright law in
> your own 
> country.
> 
> When it is nessisary to add extra privileges to clearify issues like
> this, in 
> my own opinion, one way to do that is to have a revertable license;
> that is 
> you can either accept the license with some specific priviledges
> added, or 
> accept and use it under the terms of the GNU GPL (or lgpl)
> unmodified.
> 
> However, it seems some of the changes you have in your addendum
> create new 
> requirements, such as the advertising clause, which conflict and make
> your 
> library unusable with other GNU GPL license software, or otherwise
> create 
> different terms from those of the GNU L-GPL.  If this is your intent,
> I would 
> suggest perhaps what you really should do is a dual disjunctive
> license.  A 
> disjunctive license means the software can be provided on one of two
> (or 
> more) different licenses, and the end user receiving the software can
> choose 
> which one applies. Some software is under a dual-disjunctive license
> with the 
> GNU GPL being one of the options, and a BSD-like license being the
> other.  
> Perl is similarly licensed under a dual-disjunctive license between
> the GNU 
> GPL and the "Artistic" license.
> 
> The license you have currently, with the addendum, is contradictory,
> and I 
> believe as written, may be unusable with other GNU GPL licensed
> software.  
> Since your goal was to make your library more easily and widely
> usable, it 
> seems this has accomplished the exact opposite.
> 
> David
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=====
James Michael DuPont
http://introspector.sourceforge.net/

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