On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 18:09:10 +0200 Joerg Schilling <Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote: > Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote: > > > So if you want your software to be used by the majority of Linux > > distros without license-related hiccups, you can always just > > re-license it to GPL and everyone will be happy. > > You seem to be missinformed: When cdrtools have been 100% GPL, it was > attacked by Debian _because_ it was 100% GPL and because the GPL is a > frequently missinterpreted license. > > ...so I decided to choose a less problematic license than the GPL. It is indeed true that I might be misinformed --- I am writing from my (possibly faulty) memory here... But as far as my memory serves, the issue was not that cdrtools were GPL, but that the toolchain for building cdrtools source (was that called "schilly-tools"?) was non-GPL. And the dispute was about the interpretation of the GPL --- does it require you to license the whole build-toolchain as GPL if cdrtools are GPL, or does it not require you to do so. And that was where things regarding GPL interpretations got complicated, and all that ugly story with Debian folks that followed. In essence, the conclusion was that there was no "fully-GPL"-kind of way (whatever that might mean) to distribute cdrtools such that the binaries could be built from source, if toolchain for the build is non-GPL. That was the reason why cdrtools were attacked "for being GPL", as you said. So to avoid this problem, you re-licensed cdrtools to CDDL, which does not require any restrictions on the licence of the toolchain. And ever since then, various distros refuse to bundle cdrtools since the toolchain used for building the cdrtools binaries has a license that makes it unsuitable for them. Or something along those lines. That is how I remember the whole story, in short. Of course, my memory might be faulty, you certainly know all those details much better than I remember them. Nevertheless, my point was the following --- assuming that the dispute was as I described it above, or something along those lines, the whole thing could be resolved if you just re-license *both* cdrtools and the schilly toolchain to be GPL. Or maybe dual-licence them, as Les suggested in another post. Not wanting to do that is of course your prerogative, but I believe it would solve all license-related problems for the cdrtools in one single and simple step. That way all distros could be allowed to bundle your software without any issues. > > software as you see fit, they equally have the right to not like > > your license and to boycott your software because of it. > > Democracy is that the doers and this are software authors decide > about the license. Sure, no argument there. :-) > Distros are just users of the software and have to > accept the license and as long as the license is doubtless OSS > compliant, I see no reason why a distro should complain. Well, it is certainly more complicated than that. Different distros obey different internal and external rules which licenses to accept and which to refuse. There are many things in play there --- legislation of the country of origin, eventual patent issues, internal distro policies about what constitutes as "freedom", etc... Fedora is a typical example where one can find all sorts of complicated reasons why something was not included. So while every distro is of course required to accept the way you licensed your own software, other reasons might prevent them to bundle your software, despite your license being generally OSS compliant. This is of course unfortunate, but it is not simply the case of distro being "evil" or something --- it may be a consequence of complicated interactions between several sets of rules, etc., leaving them with no choice in the matter. Best, :-) Marko