[Zope-dev] ZPL and GPL

Michael R. Bernstein webmaven@lvcm.com
26 Jun 2001 12:30:37 -0700


On 26 Jun 2001 10:29:39 +1000, Anthony Baxter wrote:
> 
> >>> Michael "R." Bernstein wrote
> > Unless I've misunderstood something (which is certainly possible), DC
> > doesn't seem to have anything to lose by switching from a BSD style
> > license to the GPL (or a GPL style license with an additional optional
> > attribution clause), and quite a bit to gain.
> 
> They will probably lose developer mindshare. Given how important 
> this is to Zope's growth (and to DC's growth, as a result), this 
> is far far more important than the karma from switching to the 
> far less flexible GPL

You're right. I hadn't considered that the ZPL needs to be 'proprietary
compatible' so far as add-on products are concerned. perhaps the LGPL
would suffice, as that would permit creating proprietary Zope products.
But I won't be entirely happy if the ZPL permits proprietary third-party
redistributions of Zope itself.

> Your argument seems to be that DC would want to control other companies
> ability to make distributions derived from Zope - unless they've been 
> hiding this nefarious plan from the community, this doesn't seem to
> be an objective for them.

Heh. I guess I shouldn't have stuck that in there. An argument I've
occasionally heard for BSD-style licenses is that the original (usually
corporate) author wants to be able to make proprietary releases based on
other peoples contributions. The argument for NPL-style licenses is that
they (the original author) want to be the *only* one with such a
privileged position. DC has never indicated that either of these was
important to them.

> As far as a contributor to Zope wanting to keep their work free, then
> if the ZPL is GPL compatible, they can make their components GPLd.

True.

Michael Bernstein.