License update considerations

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Currently, the license as committed reads:

Theses [sic] classes are free to use but copyrighted. Use them
on your own risk. If they burn your house or destroy your
data it's all your fault.
This software is a beta release and may contain severe
bugs which may cause data loss. So be sure to backup
important data prior to installation.

which isn't so much a license as it is a notice. While the intent may not have been the same as GPL, some proper freeware license (MPL) should probably be considered, if we can somehow get Chris' consent or the consent of anyone into whose care he trusted the sources.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Some components are apparently GPL.

MMPlayer, for example, includes GPL text in ​license.txt.

These should be brought into parity. If the original intent was truly GPL, then my previous mention of MPL should be ignored.

[stevenhl]

Here's my interpretation. The controlling license is GPL because that's how the GPL works. The other licenses are what I call "BSD-like." This means that any binary distribution will require us to make the full sources available as required by the GPL.

Others are free to take the sources with the "BSD-like" license and use them in other works in any way that the license permits.

What we do need to do is decide how we want to license any newly created sources, going forward. Any open source license that's compatible with the GPL will be fine. For the cwmm sources, this can be GPL, LGPL, MPL, BSD etc.

What we cannot do is change the license terms of any of the existing sources without explicit permission from Chris.

None of this should be a problem because we have no intention of attempting to close the cwmm sources and the existing licenses are all GPL or compatible with the GPL.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Milestone renamed

[Lewis Rosenthal]

I would recommend we stick with GPLv2, as that appears in almost every file I've found to date. Do we then remove Chris' supplementary notice concerning "If you need another license for your project/product," or just leave that in place where it appears and not include that in anything new?

[dryeo]

Well Chris is free to re-license his work any way he wants. Of course at some point we're going to change things enough that our work will be covered by the existing license(s), which Chris can't re-license without permission.
I'd suggest removing the supplementary notice when we bump the version, it'll be in the history and I doubt that anyone is going to want to change the license anyways.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

That makes sense to me.

[dryeo]

There are some such as the REXX scripts to build the DEF files that are more freely distributable. I'd suggest mentioning in the README or a LICENSE file that most is covered by the GPL with exceptions and to check the individual files for full licensing or similar.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

See my post to the dev list concerning READMEs and license files. Once we reach consensus on what's staying and what's going, I think this license issue should pretty much resolve itself.