[Biopython-dev] Code review request for phyloxml branch

[Hilmar Lapp]

On Sep 25, 2009, at 11:28 AM, Jaime Huerta Cepas wrote:

> As far as I know, the main difference between GPL and BSD-like  
> licenses is that, with the second, you could relicense the code at  
> any moment under any other policy, including private and close  
> licenses.


This is not true. None of the open-source licenses that I'm aware of  
allows anyone to relicense code under a license that is less liberal,  
or to relicense code at all. It is the copyright owner who can  
relicense code, not the distributor.

One of the differences between GPL and BSD is that GPL is viral.  
Specifically, code that links to GPL-licensed code must also be GPL- 
licensed *when it is distributed.*

(It is a common misconception that GPL is unconditionally viral. I can  
take GPL code and link to it and keep my code closed source for as  
long as I please if I never redistribute it. GPL was written with  
software vendors in mind, whose business consists of distributing  
software for commercial gain. GPL has therefore sometimes been called  
anti-commercial. This is wrong, too, but I won't go into the details  
here.)

Biopython can freely utilize GPL-licensed (or closed source, for that  
matter) software if it doesn't link to it. IANAL but I think it can  
also redistribute GPL-licensed code along with Biopython so long as  
Biopython doesn't link to it, and it is made clear that some of the  
distribution falls under a different license than BSD. (Linux  
distributions mix BSD and GPL software, too.)

As for ETE itself, a BSD/MIT style license seems to be the by far most  
widely used license for Python modules. If you want to facilitate  
adoption of the software as a library by other programmers, GPL is  
going to stand in the way of that. Also, really all that you are  
accomplishing with GPL is that a software company can't take advantage  
of ETE. Is that your chief concern? GPL won't prevent any scientific  
lab from writing closed source code that builds on ETE and publishing  
the results, so long as they don't distribute their closed source code.


	-hilmar
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: Hilmar Lapp  -:-  Durham, NC  -:-  hlapp at gmx dot net :
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