DN479391930

Subject: Licensing issues for Feather. - DN [1]

Paul Duffin <pduffin@mailserver.hursley.ibm.com> - 18 May 1999 - comp.lang.tcl

 I have just been looking at what the best license is for releasing my
 Feather package under. I have taken a look at the one which comes with
 Tcl, the GPL http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html and the
 Lesser GPL http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html (formally know as
 the Library GPL). I would be very interested in people's comments on
 my proposal.

 Feather is a set of shared libraries which support the Stub interface
 so it has a set of Stub archive libraries which extensions wishing to
 use it must link to. If these libraries were covered by the LGPL then
 every extension which linked to them would have to provide sufficient
 information (either source or object code) to allow the extension to be
 rebuilt with a modified version of the libraries.

 What I am proposing to do is the following.
  1) The Stub libraries are covered by the same license as Tcl uses, this
     means that extensions which link to them do not have to be rebuilt.
  2) The main extensions will be covered by the LGPL which means that
     nobody can restrict their use.

 Comments ? I am particularly interested in how you think this use of
 two different licenses would work, I do not want either one of them to
 'leak' across to the other.

 --
 Paul Duffin
 DT/6000 Development    Email: pduffin@hursley.ibm.com
 IBM UK Laboratories Ltd., Hursley Park nr. Winchester
 Internal: 7-246880    International: +44 1962-816880