Simple Solution to Ruby Licensing Issues/Misunderstandings

ruby-talk
1

After hearing a lot of confusion abour ruby licensing, I decided to summarize and offer a few SIMPLE, PAINLESS solutions for consideration.

FACT #1: The ruby license is not well-known. It isn't even listed as an OSI-approved license at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

FACT #2: The ruby license is frequently misunderstood as seen on comp.lang.ruby.

FACT #3: There are well-known, well-understood and widely-used opensource licenses that Ruby can use without changing the fundamental rights of the author or user as provided in the current Ruby license.

Three Possible Solutions (out of many) are:

SOLUTION #1 - BSD license (very well-known, commercial-use friendly)
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

SOLUTION #2 - MIT license (even simpler but not as well-known)
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

SOLUTION #3 - Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
   Here's one that is user-friendly (explanation + full legal)
   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

   This was selected by filling out the form here:
     http://creativecommons.org/license/

OTHER SOLUTIONS:
For a HUGE list of OSI-approved licenses, see here:
   http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

2

#5: Get OSI to list the license.

3

Aredridel wrote:

#5: Get OSI to list the license.

That doesn't solve the problem of people not understanding the license or people not being sure if it is "commercial-use friendly".

The most effective solution is to use one that is already widely used and known to be commercial-use friendly.

EMPLOYEE: we'd like to use ruby programming language. the ruby license seems friendly and meets our needs.

CORPORATION: We've pre-approved Artistic, BSD and MIT licenses. GPL or LGPL requires special approval from your project manager. All others need to be submitted to our legal department by the CIO or CTO and that could take weeks.

EMPLOYEE: ummm....never mind, we'll just use perl.

4

Or how about this: Ruby is dual-licensed; it can be used under the Ruby license terms, or under the LGPL. Would it be problematic to add the BSD license in the mix?

That way, the people who are comfortable with things the way they are won't have to change anything; but those who are nervous can be reassured by the BSD part.

cheers,
Mark

···

On Jul 19, 2004, at 2:22 PM, Gully Foyle wrote:

Aredridel wrote:

#5: Get OSI to list the license.

That doesn't solve the problem of people not understanding the license or people not being sure if it is "commercial-use friendly".

5

Is that allowed by the mix-in mechanism supported by Ruby :wink:

Ed

···

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 08:01:50 +0900, Mark Hubbart <discord@mac.com> wrote:

Or how about this: Ruby is dual-licensed; it can be used under the Ruby
license terms, or under the LGPL. Would it be problematic to add the
BSD license in the mix?

6

In article <478c16ae040720123626c63bc1@mail.gmail.com>,

Or how about this: Ruby is dual-licensed; it can be used under the Ruby
license terms, or under the LGPL. Would it be problematic to add the
BSD license in the mix?

Is that allowed by the mix-in mechanism supported by Ruby :wink:

Ed

module LGPL
....
end

module RubysOwn
....
end

module BSDLicense
....
end

class RubyLicense
  include LGPL
  include RubysOwn
  include BSDLicense
end

....seems to work :wink:

Phil

···

Edgardo Hames <ehames@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 08:01:50 +0900, Mark Hubbart <discord@mac.com> wrote: