Call for Opinions about our License

[jriegel]

Hy together,
over the license hassle of the last years (Debian, OCC, RedHat...) I'm not very happy any more with our
LGPL2+ license. I don't have the trust in the FSF any more. Despite the name, they became (or are) very dogmatic
and it feels, there is not much "free" left in our situation. Actually I'm afraid, sometimes in the future we get a license
clash with no resolution and FreeCAD dies.

There fore I came to mind to change maybe to a more liberal and less politics encumbered license (e.g. BSD-3-clause).
But since I'm only one of the license holders of FreeCAD the questions go out to all the developers which contributed
notably amounts of code. Opinion of non coders also welcome!

Could you think of relicensing our code under BSD?

If not, why?

Happy flaming

[wmayer]

+1

[logari81]

I don't like too permissive licences like BSD. I do not trust the closed source world at all. Many of them, if they have the chance to use open source code to make their product better they will do it but if at some point they feel their income is threatened by some free software they will normally use all means to attack it (lobying in favor of closed/semi-closed formats, software patents, etc.). For me, some little copyleft protection like LGPL is a good compromise. Too permissive licences is a too naive approach to open source, in my opinion.

[kwahooo]

Change license, is it even possible? Every contributor have to accept relicensing...

From my observation: BSD/Apache-licensed software development is faster. Much faster. Check Bullet, Open Dynamics Engine or Google libraries.
The World isn't perfect. GPL/LGPL code is illegally "borrowed" by companies, and it never goes back. BSD/Apache code is legally borrowed. After some months/years of closed development someone can say "Let's share it!".

I'd vote for BSD, or at least MPL license.

[wmayer]

if at some point they feel their income is threatened by some free software they will normally use all means to attack it (lobying in favor of closed/semi-closed formats, software patents, etc.). For me, some little copyleft protection like LGPL is a good compromise.

Hm, I don't see the point why the (weak) copyleft of the LGPL license should reduce or solve this problem.

Too permissive licences is a too naive approach to open source, in my opinion.

You can see it also the other way round. Legal users of an LGPL library are actually forced to publish changes on this library. And now after ten years FreeCAD I'm quite sure that there are maybe a few hundred little companies that use FreeCAD for their purposes and also modified existing code. But I think it was only a handful of companies that sent back some patches.

And for the GPL (in general) it's even worse. You're not allowed to link GPL libraries against closed-source applications but we all know that there is a certain percentage of companies that don't care about all this. So, from this point of view you can consider the (L)GPL licenses as naive.

But nevertheless independent on how we decide to move to BSD or not I'm still fine with the LGPL because it allows to use FreeCAD together with closed-source. And that's the most important point for me. And once the GPL hassle with Coin3d (by its move to BSD) is solved the way is finally free to get access to all major Linux distributions.

[wmayer]

Change license, is it even possible? Every contributor have to accept relicensing...

At least the chance now is higher than in 5 or 10 years because at the moment there are maybe <10 developers that contributed code to FreeCAD. But I think it's also possible to have some parts under BSD license and let the rest under LGPL. For example, the CGAL library uses LGPL and QPL (non-free).

[mrlukeparry]

For me, I don't really have strong views on this, I just want to code without worry. So BSD in practice would be acceptable.

One question I have is whether independant modules could have their own license (so the author has some control) or is this not possible?

From my observation: BSD/Apache-licensed software development is faster. Much faster. Check Bullet, Open Dynamics Engine or Google libraries.
The World isn't perfect. GPL/LGPL code is illegally "borrowed" by companies, and it never goes back. BSD/Apache code is legally borrowed. After some months/years of closed development someone can say "Let's share it!".

When I saw this I thought of that cheetah solver (http://www.cloud-invent.com/CAD-Future/ ... olver.aspx), they made changes to the sketch module, but have yet to share back any changes. And I agree with what wmayer said.

[triplus]

If things like this made you lost or at least shake your confident in FSF and GPL:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=143&start=100#p26249

I must say there is one more side to this story and that is proprietary formats. Why exactly is that common that proprietary formats usually don't play along with FOSS? I don't find the license problematic in this case to be honest but the propriety format itself and i doubt FreeCAD can ever have great support for this format without some propriety stuff like propriety extension or if something else changes drastically and proprietary formats are not used anymore for things big software companies use them ATM.

If FreeCAD would be interested in this (offering proprietary and maybe closed source extensions) then changing license would probably make sense otherwise i don't see much that FreeCAD would benefit from. But (L)GPL based software can still do this if copyright holder(s) allow it (like GPL linking exception)?

About this:

Actually I'm afraid, sometimes in the future we get a license
clash with no resolution and FreeCAD dies.

Two words: Copyright Assignment and if i am not mistaken FSF is strong advocate of it. Then is less likely this could happen because copyright holder(s) have the power (and responsibility) to take appropriate action but yes this does sometimes open doors for spreading at least some FUD.

In the end this is the decision "the makers of FreeCAD" will make!

[wmayer]

One question I have is whether independant modules could have their own license (so the author has some control) or is this not possible?

Yes, of course. For FreeCAD we have at the moment LGPL throughout the source code to have something homogeneous but it's of course possible to mix licenses if you want.

When I saw this I thought of that cheetah solver (http://www.cloud-invent.com/CAD-Future/ ... olver.aspx), they made changes to the sketch module, but have yet to share back any changes. And I agree with what wmayer said.

That's a good question. I'm not a license expert but I know there is a clause in the GPL that allows to use a GPL library in a closed-source application as long as this application is only used in-house. As far as you start to deploy the application you violate the GPL but not before. Maybe there is a similar clause for modifications on the source code.

[keithsloan52]

My contribution is only very very small. I don't understand the various pro's cons' of the various licences and don't want to start trying to understand, so I am happy to go with the consensus.