[Gecode] Logo, Homepage

[Guido Tack]

On Wednesday 27 October 2004 22:38, Denys Duchier wrote:
> Hi Guido,
>
> Thanks for making the changes - the pages are now very readable on my
> 1600x1200 laptop screen.  Concerning "Development" section: I suggest

Ok, good.

> Concerning the license: I have several remarks.
>
> 1. it should be more prominently accessible.  Currently, it's just the
>    disclaimer at the bottom of the web page.

It is also accessible from the "download" pages and should probably be put on 
the "documentation" pages as well.

> 2. this license is refered to as the "Gecode License Agreement".
>    That's an unknown.  Nobody has ever heard of it.  If at all
>    possible it should be (1) either exactly an existing and reasonably
>    well-known license, (2) or it should state and explain its lineage
>    explicitly.  People have become (and rightfully so) paranoid about
>    IP and licenses.  It is important to address their concerns up
>    front:
>
>    - what is this license?
>    - is it compatible with e.g. the GPL?
>    - is it possible to obtain other licensing conditions, e.g. for
>      commercial applications?

We basically copied and adapted the Mozart license. So (according to the 
Mozart pages) it is "X11 style". Of course, we could make it even more "X11 
style" if we just copied the X11 license 
(http://www.x.org/Downloads_terms.html). The only obvious difference that I 
see is that it does not talk explicitly about sublicensing. The alternative 
here would be the MIT license (http://www.wordiq.com/definition/MIT_License) 
which is pretty much the same but includes sublicensing.

I don't know how important sublicensing is, I couldn't even really find a 
definition of what it actually means. If we want to go for a standard 
license, I think X11 is "free enough" - it allows commercial use and contains 
a disclaimer of all warranties. Of course this would mean that all authors 
and contributors agree (see the previous postings on this list about licence 
issues).

Actually, I just tried to find Mozart in the Free Software Directory because 
the Mozart web site says it's in there, but it's not. Maybe we should really 
consider a different license ;-)

Guido

-- 
Guido Tack
http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~tack