28 Apr
2005
28 Apr
'05
12:56 p.m.
Chris Cannam wrote:
I don't know whether you can reassign copyright
in
Germany
No, you can't.
I assume there are substantial reasons not to license
the library under
the LGPL, such as the fact that a commercial rival could then use it in
their own proprietary products.
One could think about releasing substantial additions created by the Open Source
Community under the LGPL. Julian would then be able to sell his code using a
commercial license and could still use the additions and Open Source developers
would not have to reassign copyrights.
An alternative might be to release that additional code using dual licensing:
GPL and LGPL.
The main practical problem would be the mixture of GPL and LGPL code.
One practical idea might be to suggest that authors of
big contributions
could (as an alternative to assigning copyright) retain their copyright
but license it under a very permissive licence such as the BSD one.
Both of us obviously had the same idea.
Cheers,
Andreas