[jdom-interest] licensing

[Scott Ellsworth]

At 09:44 AM 8/8/2000 -0700, Louis Tribble wrote:
>I'm not a... well, you know.

Me, either.

> >  5. If appropriate, the end-user documentation included with the
> >     redistribution and/or the software itself must include a text
> >     acknowledgement equivalent to the following:

>"If appropriate ... must" seems incongruous. Is "If possible ... must"
>too strong? It leaves some wiggle room. As in, "The company lawyers
>didn't return my call, so it wasn't possible to get authorization to
>include the logo...".

What we need to have is a bit of language defining just what we mean by "if 
appropriate".  For example, I worked for a company that, by policy, did not 
put any acknowledgments in the about box or the license.  Would it have 
been okay to use without the acknowledgement?  The argument would be that 
we never mentioned underlying tools, which allowed us to change 
implementations without the user knowing.

Would this fit the "if appropriate" meaning?  I cannot tell by reading the 
license.

I am uncomfortable with putting in "if possible", as the courts seem to be 
very unfriendly about defining what is and is not possible.  Further, as a 
programmer, I was unable to add the notice in question, but the company 
could, and thus company lawyers would not have wanted jdom used.

Perhaps adding the line "This acknowledgement should appear where other 
runtime library acknowledgements appear in the end user documentation" 
might help?

> > There are no logos yet, but we'll figure out a way to make some.  :-)
>Have there been any suggested themes for the logo?

Duke with a whip?

More helpfully, something abstract with either the letters "xml" or "jdom" 
in it would get my vote.  I hate logos in general, as they are usually not 
terribly communicative.
Scott
Scott Ellsworth
scott at alodar.com