[sword-devel] BibleMemorizer - Sword as plugin? (Licensing)

[DM Smith]

Jeremy,

I don't know what you are trying to accomplish by switching to the X 
license or similar. It says that anyone can take your code and, as long 
as they don't remove/modify the license statement, they can use it as if 
it were their own. Their only responsibility to you is to supply the 
unmodified license along with the software they develop from it. There 
is no responsibility for the users to identify whether or how they 
modified your code. If they introduced problems, it could come back to 
you for support as your's possibly would be the only name on it.

Specifically, someone could take your code, modify it or not, and sell it.

Is this what you want?

DM

Jeremy Erickson wrote:

>I am considering putting the Sword capabilities for BibleMemorizer in a 
>separate library file and loading it as a plugin.  This way, I could also 
>have an alternative plugin to return the names of the books of the Bible, 
>numbers of chapters, etc. for those who don't want to use Sword.  A plugin 
>interface would make it easy for me or someone else to add a capability for 
>BibleMemorizer to load verses from a different program.  In addition, it 
>would add flexibility for binary distributions (obviously only when someone 
>who uses Sword distributes BibleMemorizer without the Sword plugin, otherwise 
>a binary-only distribution would violate the GPL).
>
>If I did this would I still have to dual-license BibleMemorizer itself?  
>According to the GPL FAQ 
>(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NFUseGPLPlugins):
>
>"If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to 
>each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program, 
>which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the 
>plug-ins. In order to use the GPL-covered plug-ins, the main program must be 
>released under the GPL or a GPL-compatible free software license, and that 
>the terms of the GPL must be followed when the main program is distributed 
>for use with these plug-ins."
>
>Here the FSF allows for "a GPL-compatible free software license" for the main 
>app, not just the GPL.  Would Crosswire agree if I licensed the main app 
>under the 2-clause BSD license or the MIT/X11 license (which I might switch 
>to anyway since it's shorter and clearer for non-geeks), and the plugin under 
>the GPL?  Knowing how seriously licensing is taken here, I definitely will 
>not do so unless you're cool with it.
>
>-Jeremy Erickson
>_______________________________________________
>sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
>http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
>
>  
>