Re: Open Source - Licensing

"somebody" <A@xxxxx> wrote in message
news:4848731d$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Alan Garny" <someone@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

I have been working on a scientific application which I intend to release
as
Open Source. I am not, in principle, too fussed about the license itself,
but using some third party components (all of which are Open Source), no
doubt that I have to be careful. The problem, though, is that I don't
much
about Open Source licensing. I was therefore wondering whether someone
would
have some (useful) pointers? In fact, the third party components that I
use
come under one or several of the following licenses: BSD, MPL 1.0, MPL
1.1,
GPL and LGPL.

Easiest way is to not include any compiled binaries or third party stuff
in
your distribution. Just note to the user which packages are required and
where to get them.

Hmm... not sure it's that simple unfortunately. I have modified a few things
here and there in some of those third party components. From what I
remember, I did so for one because it's a non-maintained project which had a
few issues. For another, because it's a C numerical library that I could
optimise a bit by commenting out bits of code that didn't apply to my
application and also made it easier to integrate with my Delphi application.
Finally, I also use some of the components from the JCL and JVCL, but not
all of them and therefore only have, in my repository, the files of the
components that I use (I have a .dproj file that allows me to compile all
the third party components that my project uses, thus making the life of
anyone wanting to recompile my project much easier -- I am aware that this
also has a disadvantage, namely the fact that my solution may conflict with
someone's installation, e.g. if someone already has all of the JCL/JVCL
installed, but I want to think that it's a fair compromise).

Anyway, I am obviously happy to share all my changes and distribute them
with my application (assuming that can be done, that's something else that I
am not sure about! I am hoping to find out when reading more about those
licenses). All I want is to come with a solution/license that doesn't get
into conflict with that/those of the third party stuff that I use in my
application.

Alan


.

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