On Saturday 27 October 2001 09:40, James Cameron wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 26, 2001 at 11:27:35AM -0400, Dave Ahn wrote:
> > James, perhaps it's time to revisit this licensing issue and either
> > rerelease netrek under an existing OSS license or create our own.
>
> I agree, and I prefer rereleasing under an existing OSS license, but I
> have no idea how this is done.  Is it simply a matter of sticking the
> GPL on it and thus violating the 'without fee' clause of the old
> license?

Actually to do it right you would need to ask all persons named in the 
copyright.h files personally whether they agree.

As for the 'without fee' clause I would read it more the open way, that one 
may use it without fee for whatever you want and not in the closed form that 
you must only give it away for free.

But the more importaint thing in the license is the clause 'the above 
copyright notice appear in all copies' which basically means that the authors 
must be honoured by mentioning their names. I think with GPL this isn't 
guaranteed anymore. I'm not a license expert, but I guess BSD license is 
better with this respect.

> I suspect I am not qualified to make this judgement.  I'll need some
> opinions.

As for my contribution on the project, I agree with a license change and we 
definitely should use one the existing OSS licenses, to avoid further 
confusions. Netrek is Copyright (c) 1986 during that time all this license 
schemes didn't exist.

Anyway, since Netrek is a comunity project now, I guess making a poll on 
r.g.n. as well as on the development lists should be enough for a license 
change.

Kurt (007)
COW source keeper

-- 
Kurt Siegl / Franzberg 4, A-4483 Hargelsberg, Austria
Email: Kurt.Siegl at freemail.at  Tel (ISDN):   *(7225)7017
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