[TIP] does licensing of test tools matter?

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Wed Aug 5 06:08:27 PDT 2009


Ben Finney wrote:
> holger krekel <holger at merlinux.eu> writes:
>
>   
>> i was wondering the other day - is licensing of test libs and tools
>> and issue for anyone here?
>>     
>
> Freedom matters, regardless what the intended purpose of the work.
>
>   
>> As noted elsewhere i am considering using (L)GPL style licenses
>> instead of the current MIT license possibly for future py.test
>> releases so i am interested in opinions from testing people in
>> particular and trust no flame wars arise :)
>>     
>
> The fact that py.test is currently licensed under terms that respect the
> freedom of its recipients is a good thing.
>
>   

Here comes the flamewar. In many situations the GPL strongly *restricts* 
the freedom of recipients. Although less of an issue for testing code 
(which often isn't distributed) choosing the *GPL* will greatly reduce 
the number of people able or willing to use your code.

The LGPL is actually fairly free and unlike the GPL doesn't impose 
cumbersome restrictions on use and redistribution, so would be a fine 
choice IMHO.

All the best,

Michael

> I would welcome a stronger protection of the freedoms of software
> recipients, so I would approve a move from no-copyleft toward the weak
> copyleft of LGPL, or even better the strong copyleft of GPL.
>
> When considering license terms, though, please be aware that it's far
> better to choose license terms that have been widely scrutinised and are
> well-understood to unambiguously result in freedom for all recipients,
> than to cook up a new (or derived) license text with no such long
> history of refinement and correction of flaws. So I hope you don't mean
> “GPL-style”, but instead mean “GNU GPL”.
>
>   


-- 
http://www.ironpythoninaction.com/




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