[Buildbot-devel] buildbot and GPL (move to MIT?)

[Dossy Shiobara]

On 2008.04.18, Brian Warner <warner-buildbot at lothar.com> wrote:
> Apparently some people are just wired to be scared by what they've
> heard about the GPL's viral nature.

The fear, I suspect (which I personally share), is that if you "learn"
something from a GPL-covered work and "reproduce" it in your own
commercial product, does that then become a GPL violation when you
distribute your own product?

"Learn" and "reproduce" can mean anything from copy-and-paste of a
snippet vs. a coding pattern or approach that you then take advantage of
elsewhere in your own code.

It's a grey area, and lawyers (and I) like to avoid them if possible.
Thus, given the choice, choose the more liberal license.

> So I'm considering moving buildbot to the MIT license.
> 
> What do people feel about that?

I'm a big fan of the MIT/BSD license, personally.

-- 
Dossy Shiobara              | dossy at panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/
Panoptic Computer Network   | http://panoptic.com/
  "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
    folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)