[geeklog-devel] ACCU: Open source licenses 101

[Dirk Haun]

Tony wanted a full report from the ACCU conference, so here's part 1 ;-)

The presentation "Open Source licenses 101" didn't really tell me
anything about those licenses that I didn't know already.

An interesting point, though, that the presenter made was that in his
opinion, the GPL is often chosen for convenience's sake and not because
the developers really meant it or have it thought through properly.

I brought up the topic of web applications, which we have discussed
before: If you modify a web application that is released under the GPL
(say, Geeklog), and you only use it to run a website but you don't
distribute your modified version, then you don't have to share your
modifications. The presenter agreed that this was an oversight in the GPL
- mostly because at the time the GPL was written, web applications as
such didn't really exist. He wasn't aware of any other open source
license that covers this case either.

Since the presenter was David Ascher from ActiveState, I asked him (after
the talk) about the chances of them porting Komodo to MacOS X.
Apparently, they do get that question a lot, but not often enough to make
it worthwhile funding the development of such a version. So he didn't
exactly say "no", but he made it clear that the chances are slim.

Too bad. I guess I have to try running Komodo remotely off of my Linux
box. David Ascher mentioned that people seem to be doing it, although it
tends to be a bit sluggish.

bye, Dirk


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