Re: ada < - > java bindings wanted

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <37BD0169.B49F73A5@acenet.com.au>,
  Geoff Bull <gbull@acenet.com.au> wrote:

> It is open source with a license intended to be less
> restrictive than GPL,

I would really encourage people not to come up with
idiosyncratic open sources licenses of their own. There
are a wide variety of standard licenses to choose from.
The trouble is that if you use a specialized license then

a) there is no real assurance that it is drawn up properly,
since it is not clear that attorneys have reviewed it etc.

b) open source licenses can be tricky. At this stage we have
a pretty good understanding of the GPL, the BSD license (to
choose one example of a much less restrictive license which
encourages/permits incorporation into proprietary code), and
many other licenses.

c) the effort to read and understand a new license can act as
a significant barrier to adoption of the associated code. It
means, if you are being careful, that you have to spend a
considerable amount of time and money, getting your own
attorneys to read the license, and understand it, a process
that often takes going backwards and forwards.

It is quite reasonable for an author to want to use a license
which is less restricitive than the GPL, in particular if you
want to allow people to incorporate your work in non-open
source software. But there are many well understood, well-known
licenses that do this, and indeed, you can simply place your
code in the public domain, to remove all restrictions if you
like (that is also a well understood status).

> but if you make improvements I'd
> like to incorporate them for the benefit of all.

Normally, the use of a license that specifically goes out of
its way to allow improvements to be incorporated into non-open
source non-free code is interpreted as not only allowing, but
essentially encouraging such use where appropriate (this is
for example the effect of the modified GPL used for GNAT
sources, we quite understand and expect that people will use
(possibly modified) versions of the GNAT runtime in their
distributed proprietary/classified/secret etc code.

If you really would like to be able to incorporate any
improvements that are made for the benefit of all, why
not use a standard license that allows this.

It may be that your license is indeed a rather standard one,
modified little or not at all, but there was no easy way of
telling. Reading your license, it is quite complex, and I
certainly would not venture an interpretation of some of
its features without an attorney to advise me!

Finally, are you sure your software is indeed open source?
Has your license been approved as a legitimate open source
license? Remember that the phrase open source is protected,
and you should only use this phrase if you are sure that
your license has been approved (another reason for using
one of the standard licensing vehicles).



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