On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 12:04:36AM +0100, Jonathan Underwood wrote: > On 22/05/06, Patrice Dumas <pertusus@xxxxxxx> wrote: > >There are many terms in the licence that are incompatible with free > >software > >(obligation to send back patches, only academic use...), so not compatible > >with fedora. > > Yes, that was my reading to. However, having read through all 20 pages > (!!) of their license file, it seems clear that their intentions are > good, and that their main concern is that the source code is kept open > and free, though they are clumsy in the execution of that. CCLRC is a > publically (tax payer) funded research council here in the UK, and I > would imagine that they are committed to keeping the source open. I > suspect that a carefully worded letter/email explaining the problems > with the license and offering suggested solutions would be well > received once they are convinced that the GPL would serve their needs. > Thanks all - I'll see if I can discuss this with the developers and/or the CCLRC and get something straightened out. As far as I understand it, the reason they avoided the (L)GPL was due to concerns over its legal standing in the UK: http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence/blog/2005/01/08/open_source_licenses http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence/blog/2005/01/24/MoreOnOpenSource http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence/blog/2005/01/25/legal_stuff Rather than work out these difficulties with the FSF(E), the CCLRC found it best to come up with their own licensing scheme, it seems. Regards, Tim -- fedora-extras-list mailing list fedora-extras-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-extras-list
