[Nagiosplug-devel] [Nagios-users] Licensing of Official and 3rd Party Plugins

[Thomas Guyot-Sionnest]

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On 10/01/08 04:37 AM, Hari Sekhon wrote:
> Holger Weiss wrote:
>> Personally, I'm somewhat annoyed by the various incompatible Open Source
>> licenses floating around, as it they can make re-using code impossible
>> in some cases.  As the GPLv3 is yet another license which is
>> incompatible to everything else, I'm not really a fan of it.  I would
>> prefer "GPLv2 or higher" licenses over "GPLv3-only", if possible.

Incompatibilities among GPL license are only brought by "GPLvX-only"
type of licenses. Programs and libraries using "GPLvX or higher" will
always avoid compatibility problems among GPL licenses.

GPL is meant to be incompatible with other licenses. If you're worried
about that you should use the BSD license but keep in mind that OSS
wouldn't be nearly as strong as it is with BSD. Many companies
contributing to OSS would just rip the code if it was under the BSD license.

>> However, that's just me.  People who are interested in the new GPLv3
>> restrictions will of course prefer "GPLv3-only" licenses.
>>
>> Holger
>>   
> Thanks for the response, I think your points are valid. I'll continue to 
> use a GPL version 2 or higher license in order to try to maintain 
> compatibility
> and then I'll go GPLv3 when more people get in to it.

That will likely change for the next release if we update Gnulib to the
latest version, as they bumped their license to GPL v3. GPL requires
code linking to GPL be GPL as well, and obviously of the same version.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility

Thomas
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