Consider changing the license for a more liberal one

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi,

Since this project is a library and you probably wish to have the largest 
number of people use it, you should consider using a more liberal license such 
as a BSD-type one (ASL for example) or barring that at least the LGPL license.

Otherwise it makes this library not usable when you already have LGPL or 
BSD-type code.

This is my case for XWiki which is LGPL. Using this library "contaminates" 
XWiki and makes it GPL too...

I know that PircBot is under the GPL license already and that's probably why 
you've used GPL too. But have you tried talking to the authors of PircBot? 
Maybe they'd be willing to allow this fork to be under a more liberal license?

Thanks

Original issue reported on code.google.com by vmas...@gmail.com on 4 Mar 2012 at 3:00

[GoogleCodeExporter]

You know, I haven't really thought about the license too much. While I tend to 
somewhat ignore licenses since I stick to mainly open source I can see that 
being a problem for real projects. 

I think the major issue is that the original project had an open, free, GPL 
license and a for pay, closed, commercial license. I think it might be 
difficult to allow a derivate (even a pretty radical derivative like this 
project) to fork based on the GPL then just allow everyone to use it, 
commercial or not. 

I will ask though. I'll comment again when I have a response

Original comment by Lord.Qua...@gmail.com on 4 Mar 2012 at 3:50

• Changed state: WaitConfirm
• Added labels: Type-Task
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I have sent 2 emails both of which are being ignored. I do not know why, but I 
have at least tried. I will keep trying but I'll probably eventually end up in 
his spam folder

I tried asking for clarification in the second email about a second option: 
Having users buy a commercial license from him and just using my program. His 
license ( http://www.jibble.org/licenses/commercial-license.php ) should allow 
you to do that

Honestly, I find having to do that obnoxious, especially considering that your 
software is still open source. I honestly refuse to enforce the license on 
other open source projects since that just doesn't help anybody and goes 
against some of the ideals of open source, but you still have to worry about 
the authors of PircBot.

I will keep trying though. Maybe something will happen

Original comment by Lord.Qua...@gmail.com on 27 May 2012 at 7:07

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I have contacted the author of PircBotX, and am currently explaining the 
request for change. He "will have a think on it", depending on why we require 
this.

Original comment by entityreborn on 3 Jan 2013 at 11:14

• Changed state: Started

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I have also linked Paul to this page, to support our request for the license 
change.

Original comment by entityreborn on 3 Jan 2013 at 11:18

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks for following this up. I hope your request will succeed. It would help a 
lot IMO spread pircbot/pircbotX

Original comment by vmas...@gmail.com on 5 Jan 2013 at 8:51

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Update for those following:

It looks like this is going to be almost impossible. According to 
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193565/changing-the-license-in-a-
fork-from-gpl-to-gpl-compatible no fork can relicense code without explicit 
permission of everyone involved, including those who have submitted patches.

In order for me to relicense the code we would have to completely rewrite all 
code that came from PircBot. While major parts of the code have been rewritten, 
there are still parts that are still mostly original as documented in 
https://code.google.com/p/pircbotx/wiki/GPLRestrictedCode

I do not see this happening for a very long time, but I will continue to keep 
this issue open to document the status. Any users that wish to help are welcome 
to respectfully email paul at jibble.org

Original comment by Lord.Qua...@gmail.com on 8 Apr 2013 at 6:25

• Changed state: WaitConfirm