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Comment by mbreese | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate the sentiment, but I was looking forward to using this until I saw that part. I (like I assume many others) cannot use a GPL3 library (and I'm in academia). If you want any sort of traction for a library, GPL3 is not the way to go.

This is why the LGPL was created, so that you can have modifications done on your library be free-as-in-speech, but still make the library as a whole useable for a wide variety of other projects, including closed-source versions.

Having a separate requirement to email you for a free-as-in-beer license is just overly complicated for this. The more hurdles you put up for people, the fewer that will adapt the library. I think that licensing is one of those cases where is doesn't pay to be clever. Plus, what happens when you decide to stop maintaining the code? Do you want to keep getting emails for licenses years from now?

Edit: in last paragraph, I said free-as-in-speech, but meant beer (see comment below).

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The default GPL is free-as-in-speech. You do not have to email for GPL. You have to email for free-as-in-beer. I assume that in case free-as-in-speech is not OK, it is also not a major hurdle to email for the free-as-in-beer version. In case emailing is a major hurdle, maybe you do not really need the free beer part.

Should we stop maintaining the code or get bored mailing free beer licences, we'll very likely change the licence to LGPL or MIT. Until then beer comes via email.

In the case of changing licenses, make sure over the course of your project maintainorship that you have the right to relicense all the code, including patches/contributions from others.

I wish it was simply licensed MIT or BSD, but congratulations on your software and sticking to your convictions.

> I (like I assume many others) cannot use a GPL3 library (and I'm in academia).

Is it copyleft in general, or the patent grant that hinders your work in in Academia? I not sure why you should be using other peoples work for free, but then go around and sue anyone who copies or improves on your work.

The project wrote down exactly what they wanted to do with their work on their license page. I say good for them. More people should do so and think what they themselves want.

I've had academic licensing offices balk at the GPL. I've had my fights with people over this, and lost. There are some specific clauses that they didn't like (this was GPL2). However, they rarely have problems with MIT/BSD licenses, so in general, that's what I try to use.

My stance is that since they did the work, the authors of the library can license it however they'd like. But, if they wanted to get more people using their library, I think that they should rethink their approach. LGPL is more appropriate for a library, where you can still have your copyleft approach for the code you wrote, while still promoting wider use.

Here's an extreme edge case... as they said, if they get tired of supporting the email to get a free-as-in-beer license, they will just open it up with an MIT/BSD style license and be done with it. That's great. But what if someone gets hit by a bus? Or someone leaves the project and moves to Antarctica? There would be no practical way to release an unencumbered version.

Really though, they can do what they want - it's their code. But licensing is one of those areas that you really shouldn't try to be clever.

> But, if they wanted to get more people using their library, I think that they should rethink their approach.

They actually don’t want as many people as possible using their library. That is not the goal when choosing the GPL. The goal is to maximize the number of free users in the world – that is, users who have the freedoms which define Free Software. Mere users is inconsequential. If users is what you desire, then by all means, choose a permissive license (MIT/BSD/etc).

I'd just make a remark that even in the GPL world everything is not as simple as it looks. There are GPL versions with _exceptions_ endorsed by RMS, for example. A long time ago I used to work on a Hobbit scheme compiler for the scm interpreter, which was promoted by RMS and became Guile later. scm had such a GPL-with-exceptions clause by RMS, which was stated clearly incorrectly. I take every chance to boast that I convinced RMS to fix the error in his own GPL version for scm :)

Yes, there's a lot of subtlety to licensing. Personally I think it should be taught in computer science schools. Open source software has really changed the dynamics of corporations. Of course we wouldn't have the open source movement without free software and imho free software is more important than ever. You seemed to have struck a nice balance with this exception that protects your interests in the database space.

And yes, getting RMS to change something is quite the accomplishment :) His ability to walk the talk is impressive.

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