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From: | Dinesh Vadhia |
Subject: | LGPL, GPL, et al ... |
Date: | Sat, 22 May 1999 04:19:39 +0100 |
Some industry points of view: ...
Provided the Swarm organisation continues to
remain alive and kicking well into the future then there should only ever be one
codebase for Swarm ...
Whatever license is chosen it should (or must)
allow industry users to create products around the Swarm codebase (in binary
form) to sell to the market (provided Swarm codebase is recognised
in products license and states where sourcecode can be obtained)
...
I looked at the new Mozilla.Org license the
other day and it does provide this flexibility ...
Dinesh
----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Riolo
To: address@hidden
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 12:56 PM
Subject: Re: 1999 Swarm survey results: available online [extra
bonus question!] Marcus, These seem like strong arguments for going to the GPL. You might want to directly ask some of the non-academic users of Swarm (or potential users who came to SwarmFest99, or are on the various mailing lists) to see what they think. (By directly I mean sending them messages directly, since they might not notice the request you sent below.) If I understand it (and I'm sure I don't understand it all...), point (5) below means that if a private company uses Swarm to develop a system/model for in-company use, i.e., doesn't try to sell it, then they can keep their model private. Is that right? If so, that probably covers the concerns of most private companies who are interested in Swarm...at least it would for the private companies I have helped develop Swarm models. But as I say, you might spend a little time to directly ask them, to be sure to get their thoughts on this before making the change. While Swarm may survive ok under the GPL, if that drives off non-academic users I think Swarm will have a much more difficult time surviving. - r ps sorry for sending this to two lists: that's what reply-to came up with, and it wasn't clear to me where you wanted this conversation to take place. Rick Riolo address@hidden Center for Study of Complex Systems (CSCS) 4477 Randall Lab University of Michigan Ann Arbor MI 48109-1120 Phone: 734 763 3323 Fax: 734 763 9267 http://www.pscs.umich.edu/PEOPLE/rlr-home.html On Wed, 12 May 1999, Marcus G. Daniels wrote: > Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 13:28:27 -0600 (MDT) > From: Marcus G. Daniels <address@hidden> > To: address@hidden > Subject: 1999 Swarm survey results: available online [extra bonus question!] > > > I'd like to get some input about our distribution conditions for Swarm. > > Currently, Swarm is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public > license (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html). This license was > selected because it ensures that distributed changes and improvements > to the simulator itself are available to us and available to the > community. The LGPL makes no demands on the general availability of > source code for models that are implemented using Swarm. > > However, five things are causing us to reconsider this decision, i.e. > switching to the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html): > > 1) Windows users of Swarm already rely on the Cygwin DLL, which is > distributed under the GPL, not the LGPL. Thus, Swarm models > distributed for the Windows environment effectively fall under > the GPL, unless you purchase a ~$7000US license from Cygnus. > > 2) We are being inhibited from acheiving portability of the Java > layer for Swarm by denying ourselves the option of relying on > GPLed software. As it stands, without several extra weeks of > work, HP/UX won't run Swarm 2.0 unless we put GPLed software in > the Swarm distribution. > > 3) The Swarm survey indicates that research users dominate industry > users by factor of thirty. Whatever comprimises we (via the LGPL) > make for industry users, it doesn't seem to be making a > difference in terms of getting industry participation. > > 4) We can arrange alternative licenses for groups that distribute > (e.g. sell) models, but can't afford to distribute the source code to > their models. > > 5) There are no requirements imposed on users of > private, non-distributed Swarm models under the GPL. > > For more info on free software licensing issues, please refer to: > > http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html > > > ================================== > Swarm-Support is for discussion of the technical details of the day > to day usage of Swarm. For list administration needs (esp. > [un]subscribing), please send a message to <address@hidden> > with "help" in the body of the message. > > ================================== Swarm-Support is for discussion of the technical details of the day to day usage of Swarm. For list administration needs (esp. [un]subscribing), please send a message to <address@hidden> with "help" in the body of the message. |
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