[JDEV] Question about licensing

[Thomas Charron]

Quoting Isotope2k at aol.com:
> In a message dated 10/6/99 6:04:49 PM US Eastern Standard Time, 
> quad at jabber.org writes:
> What license is the protocol released under?

  Erm, I'm not sure the protocol NEEDS to be licenced.  If anyone tried to 
patent/tradmark/etc the protocol itself, they would be in for a world of 'Prior 
Art' clauses.  I'd be interested in a more informed legal opinion then myself, 
though..

> If the point of releasing the protocol under a non-GPL license
> is to ensure that proprietary clients can be developed without
> enforcing the GPL on them, why not just add an addendum to
> the GPL license that allows for this?

  IMHO, client using the protocol, or even clients making fucntion calls to the 
LIBRARIES should be able to do so without conforming to the GPL.  Someone 
brought up the point about the libraries earlier, and I think this needs to be 
addressed.  Perhaps we should release the libs, etc under two distinct 
licences, and allow the end user to choose?  I know, I know, BIG can 'o worms 
here.

  At least the perl modules will have no problems, they are distributed under 
the artistic license, NOT the GPL..

> My primary concern here is that some corporate entity might
> eventually control the rights to the Jabber protocol and enforce
> restrictive or cost-oriented licenses.  In other words, "sure, you
> can see the source code, but we OWN the mechanic."

  This is a valid concern that, to be honest, I never even considered.  Perhaps 
we should make an 'Ask Slashdot' question up and see what the general Slashdot 
community thinks..

--- 
Thomas Charron
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