[lug] GPL/Open Source License Questions

[Glenn Murray]

Thanks for the additional responses.  I had browsed the list Philip
Cooper was kind enough to provide a link to (below) before posting and
learned a lot.  My perogatives as copyright holder are forcefully
pointed out in

http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:230:199905:iofiehfhdocjbgmfofkm

As my project was government funded I do feel it is right to release
it under an open license of some sort.  On the other hand I'll need a
job when the government contract ends.  What about the GPL?

GPL pro:

The GPL protects me as a developer as it makes it tough for some
corporation to take my open code and then compete in the marketplace
with me when I try to sell it under a different license.  I must
acknowledge risk of this if I think there is a market for it in the
first place.

GPL con:

I understand that few developers would want to contribute to
GPL-licensed code if I am going to make money off of it (unless,
perhaps, they assigned the copyright to their contributions to me and
I paid them for their contributions out of my profits; JBoss does
something like this).

Scott Herod's "layered" licensing suggestion is intriguing: say in a
classic three tier architecture have the gui/client layer be GPL and
have the middle layer and database schema be a less restrictive
GPL-compatible license.  There may be some mixed license headaches?
Is this too nuanced?

Thanks,
Glenn



On Mon, 19 May 2003, Philip Cooper wrote:
...
> This is a great place to discuss this.  If you want a barrel full of
> license lawyers with loopholes you can post to
> license-discuss at opensource.org.  Anyway here's my $.02
...