[Coin-discuss] COIN-OR licences again...

[kevin.c.furman at exxonmobil.com]

>> As for the dual licensing idea, that has been discussed on and off for a

>> long time and there is very little chance of it happening. However, we

> Could you give a reason why this is unlikely? That it has been discussed
> a couple of times just underlines that there is a need to change
> things...

...

> Well that does not really sound dispassionate. If the reason why dual
> licensing is not an option is that there is a strong dislike ?against
> any GPL compatible license from the people in charge here, then nothing
> will change. If the aim is to see coin-or projects widely used however
> it is important to consider dual licensing with another more compatible
> license. As I guess the goal for IBM to open sourcing this project was
> so see it widely used and extended I would hope that a solution can be
> found.

I don't believe there is any particular dislike of GPL compatible licenses.
I think the main concern is that IBM chose the wording of the CPL for a
particular reason even though it was known to be incompatible with the GPL.
Many of the contributors to COIN-OR are IBM employees, and thus are not the
decision makers when it comes to intellectual property derived from their
efforts.  The primary people needing convincing on dual licensing with a
GPL compatible licene are not COIN-OR contributors, but Big Blue itself.
Although IBM's primary goal may be to see the projects widely used, they
probably also have other concerns related to protecting their patent
portfolio and control of the actual CPL terms which makes it unlikely they
would ever allow for the dual licensing any of the code under GPL or LGPL.

License is a choice.  A choice was made.  Regardless of how much easier it
might make life for others, I think we need to respect someone's choice in
how they want their intellectual property licensed.

In my opinion, of one wanted to pursue this line of thought, the path of
least resistance would be to look at the CPL and analyze exactly what terms
would need to be modified at a minimum to make it GPL compatible.  From
that point then try encourage creation of a new version of the CPL such
that current CPL code could all be licensed under the new version.