[Coin-discuss] Would it be possible to relicense parts of COIN-OR under an Apache License?

[Ted Ralphs]

Just to follow up, there was some interesting commentary on IBM
developerWorks about open source development and licensing that gives an
indication of the issues that can arise with the GPL:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-studionow/

Cheers,

Ted

On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 8:10 PM, Ted Ralphs <ted at lehigh.edu> wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Pedro F. Giffuni <giffunip at tutopia.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> --- On Sat, 10/8/11, Pedro F. Giffuni <giffunip at tutopia.com> wrote:
>>
>> > --- On Sat, 10/8/11, Soeren Sonnenburg wrote:
>> >
>> > > If I was you I would give up and take
>> > > what is there. COIN OR people will
>> > > never re-license under a GPL compatible license like
>> > > the Apache License, Version 2.0.
>>
>
> Just to make the situation clear, the COIN-OR Foundation does not own *any*
> of the code base of COIN-OR. Therefore, it is the owners of individual
> contributions that make the licensing decisions. IBM owns enough of the code
> base that we effectively cannot re-license anything without their support.
> Even with their support, re-licensing is a bigger undertaking than it might
> appear.
>
> The role of the foundation is limited to lobbying owners and also
> recommending the use of certain licenses over others, mainly for the reasons
> of keeping all projects license-compatible. In the case of the effort to
> re-license under the GPL, we just didn't have the support to make it
> happen.
>
> > If that's the problem, there are small workarounds to make
>> > both sides happy: we are indeed considering other software
>> > that is not considered GPL compatible. In this case I
>> > would find an advertisement clause quite acceptable.
>>
>
> I can't speak for IBM, but I would say that "GPL compatibility" is not
> necessarily the issue. The GPL itself is not a viable option for many use
> cases. There are plenty of organizations that will not consider using GPL'd
> code for fear of litigation and you certainly cannot embed GPL'd code in a
> closed source commercial product, something that is allowed under the terms
> of the EPL.
>
> Of course, dual licensing is a solution, but I personally do not favor the
> GPL on philosophical grounds. As Pedro said, you cannot force freedom on
> people. The Apache License looks more reasonable, but I will say that just
> because IBM supports the use of Apache for some of their codes does not mean
> it will support it's use for COIN. These decisions are made on a
> case-by-case basis.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ted
> --
> Dr. Ted Ralphs
> Associate Professor, Lehigh University
> (610) 628-1280
> ted 'at' lehigh 'dot' edu
> coral.ie.lehigh.edu/~ted
>
>


-- 
Dr. Ted Ralphs
Associate Professor, Lehigh University
(610) 628-1280
ted 'at' lehigh 'dot' edu
coral.ie.lehigh.edu/~ted
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