[jdev] Jabberd 1.4.x license concerns/questions

[Jamin W.Collins]

On Apr 1, 2005, at 10:02 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>
> The dual-licensing goes back a long time. What would be involved in
> licensing it solely under the GPL? Obviously the jabberd2 folks did
> that and it seems conceptually simpler than dual-licensing.

Well, if all the files were dual licensed, then upstream could simply 
make the changes to the file headers and release under just the GPL, 
just as anyone receiving the dual licensed version could.

However, there is also a problem with GPL and OpenSSL linking.  As I 
understand it, the common solution to this problem is to add a license 
exception that specifically allows linking with OpenSSL.  However, this 
would require acceptance from each contributor as I understand it.  
Without such an exception I'm pretty sure that no one would be able to 
legally distribute an OpenSSL linked version.

> Besides, there's a big push on to eliminate all the special licenses
> out there and just use a few (GPL + Apache + BSD or whatever). In fact
> I told some of the licensing gurus that I would help to eliminate the
> JOSL for that very reason (not that any of this is my code!).

That would certainly make things easier long term.

-- 
Jamin W. Collins