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Didier Verna's scientific blog: Lisp, Emacs, LaTeX and random stuff. 2024-01-31T17:45:28+00:00 Didier Verna urn:md5:a22c53786aff986a2da4c770c233a8f9 Dotclear urn:md5:f674a46483995964da214706361cf95a Tuesday, February 8 2011 Tuesday, February 8 2011 Didier Verna Lisp licenseopen source <p>It's been a long time since I last thought about this. Software licensing is probably the most dreadful computer science topic to me. So out of boredom, laziness, but also out of a feeling of adherence to the ideas behind the FSF, I used to blindly stick the <a href="http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0">GNU GPL</a> to most of my code. A couple of things made me rethink about that passive attitude recently though, notably the fact that the viral nature of the GPL is not something that I always want.</p> <p>Even in Lisp, you can make a difference between (more-or-less) standalone applications and actual language extensions or libraries that other people might want to use in their own code. While I still think that the GPL is okay for my applications (as Pascal Bourguignon would turn it: <q>I want to see your code too!</q>), I find it too restrictive for my libraries. I sympathize with the FSF concerns, and we probably need something so idealistic to make the open source culture progress, but I can also understand why people wanting to make a living out of their development <em>need</em> to close their source. For example, I consider the few proprietary Common Lisp vendors as my friends, and I would be glad to see them use my libraries in their own products.</p> <p>The other thing with the GPL is that it is long, difficult to read and gives me a feeling of over-complication. Probably just me and my allergy to software licensing issues, but on the other hand, it is notorious that the GPL doesn't fit very well with Lisp, for the same reasons that it doesn't fit very well with C++ code constituted mostly of templates. In those environments, the distinction between static or dynamic linking, compile-time or run-time <em>etc.</em> is blurred to a considerable extend, to the point that it doesn't make much sense anymore.</p> <h2>Choices</h2> <p>So I was ready to spend, say, 30 minutes looking for a non-viral alternative to the GPL. The first one that comes to mind is of course the <a href="http://opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0">LGPL</a>, but it looks even more complicated than the GPL itself, and as misfitted to Lisp as its mother. To the point that some people at <a href="http://www.franz.com">Franz Inc.</a> created the <q>Lisp Lesser GNU General Public License</q>, <em>a.k.a.</em> the LLGPL. This license is in fact constituted with the original LGPL plus a <a href="http://opensource.franz.com/preamble.html">preamble</a> aimed at clarifying or precising some terms used in the license itself, in the context of Lisp. This preamble left me quite sceptical. While it seems to indeed clarify a few points, I think it also adds to the confusion. For instance, it says at some point:</p> <blockquote><p>Since Lisp only offers one choice, which is to link the Library into an executable at build time <a href="https://www.didierverna.net/blog/index.php?post/2011/02/08/..." title="...">...</a></p></blockquote> <p>which I think is confusing. What about a Lisp application that dynamically loads an ASDF system. Shouldn't this be considered as very close to dynamic linking? So no. I want something simpler, widely used and accepted. This leaves me basically with <a href="http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license">MIT</a>, or <a href="http://opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license">BSD</a> style, plus <a href="http://opensource.org/licenses/bsl1.0">Boost</a> that Daniel Herring suggested on comp.lang.lisp.</p> <p>The MIT license is probably too liberal for me. It is essentially a big disclaimer but that's all. Also, some words are frightening. For instance, what does <q>sublicensing</q> exactly mean in this context? The Boost one is nice, apart from one thing: it makes acknowledgments optional for binary distribution, and I don't like that. It seems to me that the least you can do when you're using a software component written by someone else is to mention it. It will also help people interested by the feature in question to find its source.</p> <p>So that leaves me with BSD which I decided to use with a bit of rewording and one specific part removed: the <q>All rights reserved</q> part. I think it doesn't make any sense since the purpose of the license itself is to grant you some rights.</p> <h2>Acknowledgments</h2> <p>Eventhough I find that acknowledgments are important, I don't want it to be a burden on the shoulders of my <q>clicents</q>. One simple way to ease their life is to include the complete license as a header in every single file of your library. The BSD license is so short that it fits nicely in headers (actually, the whole license doesn't take much more space that the GNU GPL header alone). Besides, I use a (never released) XEmacs package for maintaining static file contents automatically, which means that I never have to deal with license contents by hand, not even in new files. For binary distribution, I also include a LICENSE file in my libraries, so that people can just copy it into their own packages and be compliant.</p> <h2>Texinfo files</h2> <p>As for Texinfo files, the copyright material needs some adjustment with respect to the original GNU recommendation. Most notably, I don't need the FSF to approve translations of the copyright notice anymore. I find that the following template fits my needs nicely:</p> <pre> @copying @quotation Copyright @copyright{} @value{COPYRIGHT_DATE} Didier Verna Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. @ignore Permission is granted to process this file through TeX and print the results, provided the printed document carries a copying permission notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual). @end ignore Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the section entitled ``Copying'' is included exactly as in the original. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be translated as well. @end quotation @end copying </pre> <p>So that's it. You can expect most of my Lisp libraries to be released under a BSD style license now.</p> https://www.didierverna.net/blog/index.php?post/2011/02/08/Which-open-source-license-for-Lisp#comment-form https://www.didierverna.net/blog/index.php?feed/navlang:en/atom/comments/70