[racket-dev] LGPL

Eli Barzilay wrote at 03/03/2011 10:10 PM:
>   Distributed under the same terms as Racket

Would it be good practice overall to pick a specific, more limited, 
license for contributors to use?

I believe that a copyright holder permitting the convenient "distributed 
under the same terms as Racket" essentially grants full (nonexclusive) 
rights to the unnamed distributors of Racket, potentially bypassing the 
intent of the open source licenses.  Some individual contributors will 
believe strongly in open source licenses, and there's various good 
reasons why licenses are used rather than public domain in most cases.  
I'd also bet money that the open-ended granting of rights would draw 
more consternation from corporate lawyers whose OK is needed to release 
code, compared to a well-trod standard license with limitations, like 
LGPL 2.1 or 3.

I didn't mind giving full nonexeclusive rights to that CSV parser as 
"same terms as Racket", just for the sake of expedience on that small 
contribution.  But, going forward in the Racket new world order, I'd 
like to be comfortable that license stuff is being done in the best way 
overall.

BTW, I think, but am not certain, that the "or (at your option) a later 
version" bit lets you upgrade the LGPL version without having to contact 
copyright holders.

-- 
http://www.neilvandyke.org/