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

Alexander Neundorf a.neundorf-work at gmx.net
Wed Aug 30 16:45:09 EDT 2006


Von: "Brandon J. Van Every" <bvanevery at gmail.com>

> 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.  

I'd also say just require BSD licensing of the cmake code snippets and modules. The scripts aren't so sophisticated that more protection would be required. BSD license just avoids any trouble.

Bye
Alex

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