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Re: [pygame] Licensing



On Monday 30 June 2008 03:16:53 Chris wrote:
> The more I read about software licenses, the more confused I get.

And then you post a summary intended to guide others that's largely wrong?
(Thereby spreading confusion)

I'm hoping that below I'm not doing the same as well, but there will be 
oversimplifications - you can't go from a multi paragraph/multi-page license 
to a short epithet without introducing ambiguity.

> In general terms...

That's a good idea though.

> LGPL is "use but don't alter."

No. LGPL is "if you change our stuff and redistribute it, you must 
redistribute the changes to our stuff, oh and feel free to relicense under 
GPL".

> GPL is "use and alter but only if the derivative is free."

No. GPL is "if you use our stuff and are dependent on it your stuff must be 
GPL".

> AGPL is "use but whatever you make must be AGPL."

Assuming you mean Affero GPL. AGPL is "if you use our stuff in a webservice, 
your stuff must also be AGPL, and must provide an offer for the source of 
both your and our stuff"

> Artistic is "use but alter only with permission."

Artistic is pretty much "share and enjoy - and try to play nicely please". 
(ish)

> BSD is "use it for whatever."

BSD is "credit me and if you redistribute the source, don't remove my headers 
saying this, but don't feel you have to redistribute any source - yours or 
mine."

BSD and LGPL are very close in that if you don't modify the source that you 
recieve you can use it as a library and /largely/ ignore licensing issues. If 
your tendency is to credit anyone who you get code from, that makes it 
trivial to comply with their conditions.

If your natural tendency is to share your code changes, but don't want to 
impose your license on others, then the BSD & LGPL license have the advantage 
of being widely used and understood meaning your code's license will play 
nicely and interoperate with other code's licensing.

The exception is if your code is in perl, in which case people should 
generally use the artistic license (if they want that general kind of 
license), since it's really designed with perl in mind.


Michael.