Subject: Re: [IBIS] EIA IBIS Open Forum Minutes (05/31/02)
From: Al Davis (aldavis@ieee.org)
Date: Sun Jun 09 2002 - 10:22:24 PDT
On Thursday 06 June 2002 12:39 pm, Matthew Flora wrote:
> I don't know if the topic has come up before, but couldn't the IBIS
> committee
> give the source code to institutions of learning for free without
> giving them
> a license to distribute it or its derivatives? If some student or
> department
> develops something neat and wants to go public with it could they
> not come back to the committee for permission? As bad as having to
> ask permission sounds, remember that an updated version of s2ibis
> got cancelled because it competed with commercial software.
and you wonder why the open source community doesn't suport IBIS.
Before beginning on any project, it is necessary to evaluate what is
available to start with. In academia, ultimately we want to be able
to publish papers on our work, and distribute the software. Some
work never makes it that far, but before beginning we need to hope
that it will.
For us to distribute software, all libraries that we use must be
available with licensing compatible with the way we intent to
distribute our work. We must be able to distribute a working
package. We cannot require our users to buy something else. just
because of a licensing problem. Most academic software uses either a
GPL or BSD style license. Some use a combination of GPL and
"proprietary license for sale" type of license, so those funding the
research can use it in their proprietary products.
So, if we are going to ask permission, we must do this before
beginning the project. We must ask for permission to relicense in a
way that we can distribute according to the license we want to use.
In our case, this means something that is "GPL compatible".
Then, once it is out, GPL allows parts to be extracted, so there is
no taking it back.
If permission is not granted, we must either not work on the project,
or must develop an alternative, sometimes in a clean-room
environment. We cannot even start the project without knowing the
decision.
After the license question is answered, then we can evaluate
suitability of the software. We cannot even evaluate the software
until the license question is answered because the risk of "IP"
infringements.
Actually, a parser is a very minor part of any project. I am
speaking in generalizations here. I have a 4.0 parser so am not
interested in the IBIS committee parser per se. I just think "GPL
with commercial licenses for sale" should be the official policy,
because it serves all well.
GPL is preferable to BSD because it preserves the revenue stream.
Matt ... in another mail, you take issue with the word "offensive".
Perhaps it is the wrong word, but I hope I have clarified it.
When you make a commercial product, and use a library from some
outside source, you first look at the licensing. If the licensing
does not allow you to distribute it according to the license you
want, you can't use it. Why do you expect developers of free
software to see it any different?
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