[CMake] cmake license question (Was: CMake Modules)

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Joerg Mayer wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 04:16:00PM +0200, Andreas Schneider wrote:
>   
>> To get a module in the repository it needs to be at least under the New
>> BSD License. Dual license with GPLv2 would be appreciated.
>>     
>
> The license discussion on #cmake got me wondering:
>
> cmake itself is 4-clause BSD license (including the advertising clause)
> which is incompatible with GPLv2.
>
> This leads to some questions:
>
> 1) What sense does it make to provide the code under GPLv2 when this
>    license is incompatible to cmake anyway?
>   

None.  Please get rid of the GPL.  I don't care about legal 
incompatibility; there probably isn't any.  I care about cultural 
incompatibility.  A lot of companies, if they see a GPL on something, 
will simply refuse to use it.  Even if it's a dual license.  The legal 
risk is, "What?  What's this author doing?  Is he going to sue us 
someday or something?"  Nobody's going to take that risk for little 
snippets of build code.  Nobody's gonna hunt through an archive of build 
snippets to weed out GPL problems.  Uniform licensing is important to 
commercial interests, and it's why projects like Eclipse have one and 
only one license available.  Everyone knows what that license is, and if 
you don't want to make an archive contribution under that license, too bad.

> 2) Can a GPLed project be built with cmake as its buildsystem?

Yes.  CMake is a tool, not a pile of source code integrated into the 
project.  Just as a BSD licensed project can be built with a GPLed GNU 
Make, and the Makefiles you write are certainly not under the GPL.  Even 
Makefiles generated by GNU Autotools are not under the GPL.  I don't 
know why you're even asking this question, unless some news article has 
totally confused you.

>  I read
>    that there was a discussion about the cdrecord build system recently
>    which caused at least Debian to fork the project and replace the
>    non-GPL compatible build system with a gpl-compatible one (or maybe
>    still incompatible).
>   

I would suggest drilling down to the exact details of why they made 
their decision.  I will wager, they made the decision for political and 
not legal reasons.

> 3) Would it be possible to relicense cmake with a 3 clause bsd license
>    (aka new bsd license)?
>   

What advantage are you hoping for from this?



Cheers,
Brandon Van Every

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