On Oct 24, 12:31am, Chad P. [email protected] wrote:
On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 11:19:42AM +0900, [email protected] wrote:
- Modernize build configuration.
- Switch to BSD-2-Clause license.
If you don’t mind the question – what prompted the license change from
Apache to BSD?
There were a few reasons.
Initially I had read that major development companies were favoring
Apache license for OSS, b/c of it’s strong legal status among other
reasons, so I started to move my projects to it. But then I read
article in SDTimes (http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?
ArticleID=35504&page=2) which said:
“Shirley added that the Apache licenses, which can be put on any open-
source software (not just Apache projects), do not ask for a copyright
grant, just a license. They also allow Apache and others to re-license
the software for profit or otherwise.”
I’m not sure I fully understand what that means, but it made me a
little uncomfortable.
That prompted me to do the smart thing and actually read the license
in detail (rather then just skim reading it and taking other peoples
word for it), and I was a little surprised by some of the
requirements, e.g.
“You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating
that You changed the files”
I wouldn’t want to have to do that myself, so I don’t want to force
others to do it either.
Then I heard Ruby was moving to the BSD-2-Clause license, and since
almost all my projects are Ruby projects, that seemed like a good new
choice.
I do like section 4.4, on the NOTICE file, of the Apache license –
that’s one thing I’d like to add, if I were customizing my license,
but I decided to just stick with the standard FeeBSD verbage. At least
for now.
In the future I am actually looking at doing something like Creative
Commons, but for OSS. I’ve started on the project, but haven’t had
time to work on it lately, and I also need to find a lawyer in the
industry that would like to get involved to handle the “long forms”.
If I ever finish that, or if someone beats me to it (which is fine by
me). Then I will likely switch to that --I think something like that
is really the way to go.
