[webkit-dev] WTF license terms

[Mike Hommey]

On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 08:34:21PM -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'd like to change the license terms for the contents of JavaScriptCore/wtf 
> from LGPL to Apple modified BSD, except for the copy of Google's TCMalloc 
> and the unicode/ directory. All the copyrights on files besides tcmalloc 
> and unicde are held by Apple and it looks like the only non-Apple 
> contributions are a handful of < 5 line build fixes which were too small 
> for copyright. Mainly I'd like to apply this to RefPtr, Vector, and the 
> Hash-related classes.
>
> I would like to do this to make the code usable by the widest possible 
> range of projects, including even proprietary code, and open source 
> projects with licenses that are not LGPL-compatible. This is basic data 
> structure code, and although it is highly optimized it is not really 
> specific to web browsing.
>
> I wanted to run this proposed license change by the community. I know there 
> have been some concerns about which code is BSD and which is LGPL. In this 
> case, I think maximum reusability is the right thing for this code.


I don't see what the problem is with LGPL. It's not GPL, you know, and
allows proprietary code to use it (under some conditions, though)

While speaking of licensing, what makes it a real mess is probably more
the fact there are both 2-clause and 3-clause BSD code than the use of
LGPL and BSD. And it's obviously worse when these 3 are used in
different files in the same directory.

By the way, I filed bug #14885 a while ago, which has fortunately been
fixed, but new files additions "broke" it again. So, coders, please be
careful when add LGPLed files, and check the FSF address to be correct.

Mike

PS: Maciej, sorry for the duplicates (the first mails got rejected due
to wrong From:).