Suggestions for releasing to Open Source

Mark Schonewille m.schonewille at economy-x-talk.com
Mon May 16 15:48:16 EDT 2011


Richmond, Andre, Derek,

It is not true that you can't release your LiveCode stacks as open source, because the LiveCode development tool is not open source. Unless the license explicitly states that the development tool has to be open source, you can safely release your LiveCode stack as open source. The fact that the Ubuntu people don't like the need for a commercial tool doesn't mean that there is no way to release your stacks as open source. Within the LiveCode community, stacks released as open source can be very valuable.

TightVNC is GNU GPL. This includes an obligation to offer the source code. Derek can offer his version of TightVNC together with the source code of his stacks as GNU GPL. Anyone who happens to have a LiveCode license can take this source code and work with it. It might be necessary to include a special permission to link source code with non-system libraries (GNU GPL v3:7) or to include your own text, an example of which you may find http://qery.us/qb here (GNU GPL v2). 

It is a real shame that GNU GPL has become that complicated. If you're making something from scratch and are not bound to GNU GPL, I'd use Creative Commons or invent something simple of your own.

Andre is right that stacks can be released as FOSS, but Derek still needs a solution to release his stacks as FOSS while connected to a GNU GPL product as well as a proprietary product. An exception added to his own GNU GPL should sort that out.

--
Best regards,

Mark Schonewille

Economy-x-Talk Consulting and Software Engineering
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On 16 mei 2011, at 20:42, Richmond Mathewson wrote:

> On 05/16/2011 09:13 PM, Mark Schonewille wrote:
>> Richmond,
>> 
>> That's not true. You could at least release your source code as open-source. There are open-source licenses that allow this. If you think no license fits, then simply invent your own.
>> 
>> --
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Mark Schonewille
>> 
> What's not true?  Certainly the Livecode engine IS Closed Source, certainly Ubuntu went
> "all funny" when I offered them 25 RunRev standalones for Linux because of the closed nature of the
> engine.
> 
> Now, as far as I understood Derek Bump's posting; he has developed something which contains
> Open Source software, and part of the licensing attached to that software requires anything developed with it to also be Open Source . . .





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