The current wxRuby license is too complicated. It is licensed under the
wxWidgets/wxWindows license, which sounds straightforward. But if you
look at the LICENSE file, you''ll see that the license itself is
copyrighted by the wxWidgets folks, but we are applying it to wxRuby.
Beyond that, the wxWidgets license itself is confusing. It starts out as
LGPL (and refers you to COPYING.LIB), but then adds exceptions that
allow you to distribute binaries without source code. I have sent a
message to the wxWidgets folks, trying to confirm that my understanding
of the wxWidgets license is correct.
I am unhappy that even I am not certain that I fully understand our license.
My proposal is to switch wxRuby to the much simpler MIT license (pasted
below, for your enjoyment). It is really easy to understand, and should
be easy for anyone to comply with.
Most likely, this change would take effect with the first swig-based
release. Since I''m writing everything from scratch anyway, I
won''t have
to go back and ask other contributors for permission to change the license.
Moving forward, I plan to require anyone who contributes code to wxRuby
to grant me the right to change licenses in the future, to any license
approved by OSI or declared "free" by the FSF. Most likely this would
be
through an informal, but public, statement emailed to this list.
Thoughts? Concerns?
Kevin
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The MIT License
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
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