Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones

David Bovill david at vaudevillecourt.tv
Sun Jan 16 10:28:32 EST 2011


On 16 January 2011 13:29, Jan Schenkel <janschenkel at yahoo.com> wrote:

> It does look like we have have little choice if we want strong protection.
> Like you, I'm leaning towards the xGPL licenses, combined with a closed
> commercial license.
>
> What worries me about it, is its viral nature in combination with LiveCode.
> While one could argue that the LiveCode "engine" doesn't have to be GPL,
> there are a few murky areas regarding the IDE and Externals.
>

It's somewhat murky - as there are no clear cut cases to set legal
precedent. Also the majority of the expertise and online documentation does
not cover scripting languages well. Having chased this down, and asked every
open source lawyer I can over the last few years, it seems that GPL for
scripting languages and closed source engines is fine. The same viral logic
that applies in the domain of low level code, should apply also within the
domain of the scripting language - that is the see legal principles apply,
but these do not extend to the engine or externals.

If a stack uses the Geometry manager, and thus needs the revGeometry script
> to function correctly, should that script also be under a GPL-compatible
> license? Same question for Externals, can you combine the GPL work with
> commercial closed externals?
>

So - unless RunRev licensed the Geometry manager / IDE under a GPL
compatible license, it would not be possible to publish open source GPL code
together with the Geometry manager code. If this were not the case it would
make a nonsense of the entire principle of GPL for scripting languages. With
regard to externals - you would (in the muddy world of GPL and scripting
languages) be OK. This ain't legal advice - just best practice from someone
who keeps asking :)



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