At 4/14/2006 02:35 PM, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
>Matt England asks:
>>Can I reuse your autconf/rpmbuild input files without restriction?
>[...]
>>My project is GPL-based. I had considering add this header to the
>>related files I would create this way (as per
>><http://subversion.tigris.org/project_license.html>). However, my team's
>>legal advise has said:
>>
>>"Although the GNU website does not list this [Subversion] license as one
>>that they consider to be incompatible with the GPL, it could be seen as
>>incompatible due to the acknowledgement requirements in the documentation."
>
>You're not going to find any Subversion developer, nor CollabNet, go after
>you for including Subversion code inside of a GPL'd product. This is the
>same text as in the Apache 1.1 and 2.0 licenses, for what it's worth, and
>it's in line with the GPL's own requirements for notifying end-users of
>its existance. It's a conflict only so far as any license that is not a
>strict subset of the requirements placed by the GPL is a conflict.
Yes, exactly. For what it's worth, the possibility of repercussions from
the Subversion project and/or CollabNet is not necessarily our
concern. We'd like to follow the GPL to it's full legal implementation, so
*no one* has any legal recourse against us at all (or at least, that's my
understanding), and for us to be good citizens in the spirit of the GPL in
general. The only way I know how to do this (and I'm not a lawyer) while
re-using Subversion code is for Subversion/CollabNet to grant my project
some sort of GPL-compliant "exception license" at least for my
project. (Fyi, my open-source project has yet to be released, so I can't
point anyone at a site yet, but this will hopefully come shortly...if
anyone needs it.)
Alas, this may not be worth the effort to do this just for some
.spec/autoconf files. However, there are some things in Subversion that my
project might be interested in re-using sometime in the longer-term future,
and we might be interested in getting GPL exceptions at that time, if that
is even an option; however, I only speculate, for our roadmap is not set in
stone (as per the nature of a roadmap). However, if we did reuse code, we
might be interested in helping to make a library out of any reusable code
capability (rather then just copying code) if it isn't already so that 1)
Subversion can help maintain the code over time, and 2) so that others
might be able to benefit.
In any case, I appreciate your note, Brian, to say that
Subversion/CollabNet has no intentions to "go after" me or my project for
reusing any code. I get the impression that Subversion wants to be to
"give freely" to the rest of the world, and I like that.
As mentioned above, it may be faster for my team to just write our own
autoconf and .spec files, from which I can reference Subversion's stuff (or
similar files from other projects--although Subversion is
somewhat-uniquely-similar to my project) but I can't actually copy the
text. Just more typing errors, etc, but I'll probably understand this
stuff better in the end.
-Matt
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Received on Sat Apr 15 00:05:50 2006