From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.lib.musl.general/567 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rich Felker Newsgroups: gmane.linux.lib.musl.general Subject: License survey Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:12:42 -0500 Message-ID: <20120219041242.GR146@brightrain.aerifal.cx> Reply-To: musl@lists.openwall.com NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1329624800 17759 80.91.229.3 (19 Feb 2012 04:13:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 04:13:20 +0000 (UTC) To: musl@lists.openwall.com Original-X-From: musl-return-568-gllmg-musl=m.gmane.org@lists.openwall.com Sun Feb 19 05:13:19 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: gllmg-musl@plane.gmane.org Original-Received: from mother.openwall.net ([195.42.179.200]) by plane.gmane.org with smtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ryy9H-0005wf-5k for gllmg-musl@plane.gmane.org; Sun, 19 Feb 2012 05:13:19 +0100 Original-Received: (qmail 1526 invoked by uid 550); 19 Feb 2012 04:13:18 -0000 Mailing-List: contact musl-help@lists.openwall.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: Original-Received: (qmail 1518 invoked from network); 19 Feb 2012 04:13:18 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.linux.lib.musl.general:567 Archived-At: Hey everyone, Lately there's been a lot of discussion on IRC about license issues, starting with Rob Landley's diatribe about acceptance on Android systems, and subsequent conversations on similar topics. While musl is almost entirely code I've written and I'm not prepared to make any immediate changes, I'd like to hear from anyone in the community that's built up so far around musl as to what your views on licensing are and whether you'd want to see any changes in how musl is licensed. Some questions to think about: Which is more important, copyleft or widespread usage of musl? Which copyleft issue(s) matter most: ensuring the project gets access to third-party improvements, protecting users' rights to study and reverse engineer, or protecting users' rights to access the code and make source-level modifications? Is it important to have a license where the official distribution is not privileged over third-party redistributions? (For example, LGPL with an exception that allowed unlimited use of the library in unmodified form would privilege me over third parties, since I would be the only one who gets to decide what goes in the "unmodified" version. Various commercial Open Source licenses have this issue, and I believe even glibc's LGPL exception has this issue.) Is the LGPL's handling of static linking problematic to you? Are there other devil-in-the-details issues with the LGPL that you see as problematic from a practical perspective of deploying musl? (Things like technical issues making source available, informing the recipient of their rights, etc.) What would be your ideal license to see musl under? Rich