Software licenses and releasing Python programs for review

[Steve Holden]

Andreas Kostyrka wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 01:57:25AM -0700, Robert Kern wrote:
> 
>>And for thoroughness, allow me to add "even if they have no intention or 
>>desire to profit monetarily." I can't explain exactly why this is the 
>>case, but it seems to be true in the overwhelming majority of cases. 
>>Academic projects with non-commercial clauses languish in obscurity 
>>while academic Open Source projects thrive. The contributors to the Open 
> 
> Well, it's easily explained. (Well at least my motivation in this case)
> I do not touch things that I cannot use "generally" and being a
> "commercial" IT consultant this basically means:
> *) opensource is better than commercial payware.
>    (because "for free" (as in beer) is usable in more contexts)
> *) GPL is acceptable for much stuff, because I can install GPL'ed
>    stuff for a customer.
> *) GPL is not acceptable for "library" stuff, because as a software
>    developer I'm sometimes forced to do "closed" stuff.
>    (Yep, even nowadays there are place where it's basically a legal
>     requirement.)
> 
> Implications:
> 
> *) qt is a bordercase: GPL for free, or commercial for pay. Not perfect but
>    good enough. 
> *) A number of O-R mappers for Python are of no relevance to me,
>    because they are GPL. O-R mappers are development libraries.
> 
But this would only be a restriction if the code were to be 
redistributed, of course. It's stil perfectly legal to use it internaly 
without making the modified source available.

> The idea is that I'm mostly not interested in learning tools that are
> not of general use.
> 
> So basically, stuff not meeting this criteria, is only interesting if
> it's unique:
> 
> *) commercial stuff is only interesting if there is no competing
>    open-source project.
> *) GPL'ed "building blocks" are only interesting when there is no
>    competing LGPL version. Example: OCR on Linux/Unix. There are no
>    perfect solutions there so a GPL'ed solution might be
>    ok. (Especially because one can use OCR without linking with a lib
>    *grin*)
> 
> Andreas

regards
  Steve
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