[Xapian-devel] New bindings for Xapian

[Olly Betts]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 08:01:49PM +0300, Eduard Suica wrote:
> Hello. I've written the bindings for the Concept Application Server
> for Xapian (and included into the default package).

Hmm, some bad news I'm afraid - the licence of your software appears to
be GPL-incompatible:

http://www.radgs.com/32-concept-application-server-license.html

Clauses 3 and 4 are straight from the old 4 clause BSD licence, but with
the organisation name changed:

http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#6

And because of this clause, the FSF list this "Original BSD license" as
GPL-incompatible:

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

Also clause 8 prohibits charging for redistribution, which is also
incompatible with the GPL.

In fact clause 8 means this is licence isn't a "Free" licence (search
for "sell copies" here: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html
) or an Open Source licence (point 1 here:
http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd ).

There may well be other incompatibilities - I gave up looking after
spotting these.

I'd strongly recommend picking an existing well known Free Software/Open
Source licence rather than trying to put together your own.  Ideally one
which is GPL compatible.

You may lose a little control over your software compared to your
current licence, but using a non-standard licence puts off a lot of users (and
Linux distros aren't going to package software with a non-free licence
which loses you a lot more potential users).  Being GPL-incompatible
also prevents a lot of reuse of existing code (like Xapian, in this
case).

Cheers,
    Olly