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

[Gianluca Sforna]

On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 6:42 PM, Dossy Shiobara <dossy at panoptic.com> wrote:
> 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.

IANAL, but I don't think what you describe would constitute a GPL
violation; I am afraid you and the other "scared" referenced here are
just victims of the FUD spread by whoever has interests in hindering
GPL and related licenses.

You don't even need to trust my judgment here, just have a look at
which kind of violations was brought to the courts by the FSF.

When in doubt ask FSF herself.

That said, I'm ok to using any OSI approved license not conflicting
with the ones of the projects buildbot depends on. This is sufficient
for buildbot to stay in Fedora repos, which is what I'm primarily
interested in.

Cheers

Gianluca


-- 
Gianluca Sforna

http://morefedora.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gianlucasforna