[jdom-interest] JDOM license evaluation

[Kenworthy, Edward]

What complete and utter utter bollocks.

The GPL and LGPL are pretty close to being perfect open source licenses.

As Richard Stallman (I believe) said (not a direct quote but from memory)
There is no onus on the open source community to assist in the development
of closed source software.

As with any piece of software to use it you have to comply with their
license - in the case of commercial software this includes paying lots of
money, not being able to modify or re-use or even see the source and putting
up with upgrade cycles that suit them. In the case of open source you get it
for free, and you can do what you like with the source. The only restriction
is you can't steal the open-source code and wrap it in your own
closed-source aplication. I really see nothing wrong with that at all.


-----Original Message-----
From: elephantwalker [mailto:elephantwalker at home.com]
Sent: 18 May 2001 02:54
To: Jon Baer; jdom
Subject: RE: [jdom-interest] JDOM license evaluation


the BSD license is the way most open-source software is distributed. The
other famous license is the linux-style license. With a bsd-style license,
anybody, anywhere, anytime can use the software and redistribute it with
another product anywhere, anytime to anybody. The other "open source"
license is severely restrictive...and essentially "un-distributable" by a
software organization, although service organizations can re-distribute
linux-style license'd material.

I haven't looked at jdom, but have assumed that it is a bsd style license
because of the caliber of the people writing it.

-----Original Message-----
From: jdom-interest-admin at jdom.org
[mailto:jdom-interest-admin at jdom.org]On Behalf Of Jon Baer
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 4:36 PM
To: jdom-interest
Subject: Re: [jdom-interest] JDOM license evaluation


Bryan Thale wrote:

> Here's a risk of using commercial software to consider:
> You may be forced by the vendor to "upgrade" to an inferior or buggy or
> bloated version of the software simply because they will no longer
> support the version you are using.  With open source software, you need
> never upgrade if you don't need or want to.  That is a particular
> advantage for embedded products.

I have a question, are you allowed to technically "repackage" JDOM into
another open source (or eventually hopefully commercial) entity into
your own package?

I have this problem with open source in that its cool to learn alot from
it and embedd it into your stuff and watch it work, but I have always
been afraid of what legal obligations there are in that you are a
developer and understand the building blocks you are putting in and
would be open to supporting it yourself because you know what is happend
and can edit to fit your needs (its biggest advantage) but A) want to
fully respect the people who created the original in the first place B)
feel that you contributions eventually turn it into another product or
type of that product or fork of that product that you dont feel
obligated anymore.

Are there any open resources on the web that specifically cover these
subjects?  I want someone to look over my www.alicebot.net project.

- Jon

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