P
Phil Tomson
There have been several posts recently about the legality of using Ruby in
commercial products. One poster even refuses to look at the Ruby source
code because he fears it will somehow taint his BSD licensed code.
I think most of these fears are unfounded and are based
on misunderstandings of the current Ruby license, but they seem to be
excluding Ruby from some commercial projects.
I suggested this in another thread, but perhaps it wasn't widely read:
In order to address the paranoia about Ruby's licensing scheme perhaps
the Ruby Foundation (the soon-to-be non-profit Foundation for funding Ruby
projects) could hire an IP lawyer to look into Ruby's license scheme and
then either issue an opinion exonerating Ruby's license or issue an
opinion suggesting changes that might be needed. I suspect this would
be $1000 to $2000 well spent to dispense with the licensing FUD that
seems to be out there. Then when questions about Ruby license come up we
could point them to a web page that shows a letter from a Lawyer that
would (hopefully) ease people's fears. Or, if the Lawyer comes back with
some problem areas perhaps we could address them.
It's really too bad that we would have to spend money on something
like this, but perhaps we could even find a Lawyer affiliated with the EFF
or similar organization who would do the work pro-bono.
Phil
commercial products. One poster even refuses to look at the Ruby source
code because he fears it will somehow taint his BSD licensed code.
I think most of these fears are unfounded and are based
on misunderstandings of the current Ruby license, but they seem to be
excluding Ruby from some commercial projects.
I suggested this in another thread, but perhaps it wasn't widely read:
In order to address the paranoia about Ruby's licensing scheme perhaps
the Ruby Foundation (the soon-to-be non-profit Foundation for funding Ruby
projects) could hire an IP lawyer to look into Ruby's license scheme and
then either issue an opinion exonerating Ruby's license or issue an
opinion suggesting changes that might be needed. I suspect this would
be $1000 to $2000 well spent to dispense with the licensing FUD that
seems to be out there. Then when questions about Ruby license come up we
could point them to a web page that shows a letter from a Lawyer that
would (hopefully) ease people's fears. Or, if the Lawyer comes back with
some problem areas perhaps we could address them.
It's really too bad that we would have to spend money on something
like this, but perhaps we could even find a Lawyer affiliated with the EFF
or similar organization who would do the work pro-bono.
Phil