[bip] changing the Pygr license?

[Bruce Southey]

Hi,
IANAL and I am also assuming you are the sole copyright owner
otherwise this is a moot point. It is your code and consequently your
decision only on the license.

I don't share the view that GPL v2 is a bad choice and that the BSD
would be better. I do prefer the GPL v2 over the BSD. While I don't
think the GPL v2 is as good as it should be it is at least understood
and respected (to a large degree even given the busybox lawsuit). I
definitely do not agree with GPL v3, if for no other reason than it is
incompatible with GPL v2.

If you do not care about how you code is used and you do not care if
people don't send you
fixes then the BSD is the way to go. It also means you can not
complain if your code ends up elsewhere (like windows, mac OS) and
what happens to it. However,  the GPLv2 is a suitable license if you
do care or want fixes.

I don't see how choosing the GPL v2 over the BSD makes it limiting to
other users. If people really want to include into their distributed
product then you can dual-license it to them under appropriate terms
(again assuming you are the sole copyright owner of the code).

Regards
Bruce

On 9/20/07, Christopher Lee <leec at chem.ucla.edu> wrote:
> Based on feedback from a number of people who felt that the GPL
> license was too limiting, I'm thinking of changing the Pygr license
> from GPL to BSD, but would first like to get people's advice about
> what they think would be the best license to use.  I only used GPL
> originally because it seemed to be what people favored at the time.
> If people now feel that GPL is too restrictive, we can change the
> license.  In my view, the main purpose of the license is just to
> ensure that the software is as useful as possible to people, within a
> reasonable set of assumptions about sharing and attribution.   Based
> on the discussion on this group, it sounds like people prefer BSD.
>
> I'd be very grateful for comments on this proposed change...
>
> Thanks!
>
> Chris
> http://www.bioinformatics.ucla.edu/leelab
> http://www.bioinformatics.ucla.edu/pygr
>
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