RE: PepperfishProfiler

["Virgil Smith" <Virgil@...>]

> That's exactly what I meant. People (maybe) cannot
> include your code and distribute the result as GPL
> (or anything else). It has to be 'GPL plus a little
> bit under the Pepperfish License'. It seems like
> it's just making obstacles for the sake of it.
...
> You've already got your assurances that your copyright
> notices will be retained, and you know that your
> source is going to remain free anyway (someone GPLing
> a particular instance of it has no effect on the
> original), so what is there to gain with this
> restriction?

This statement is simply naive.  You cannot "GPLing a particular instance".
Copyright refers to the material itself, not to a particular "printing",
i.e. instance.  Unless there is a 100% match between the license for a
section and "the" license for the whole their will in fact be a "plus a
little bit under..." situation.  The restrictions on the whole is the union
of the restrictions placed on the components.

Personally, I don't like some of the restrictions imposed by the GPL and
find that its use makes a lot of OSS practically useless outside of
academic/hobby applications.  The only upside is that licenses have no real
effect unless someone defends them in a court of law and given the nature of
the GPL its very unlikely that anyone would defend it, so lots of people
seem willing to take their chances with it.

Of course the only sure path for the author of a Lua tool to simplify its
usage from a licensing standpoint is to sell the copyright to Tecgraph and
have them stamp the Lua license on it.  This would ensure that the component
contributed nothing to the "union".  Of course, even this might fail if the
"union" in question does not "include" Lua itself, but just code written in
Lua.