new extension generator for C++

[Patrick Maupin]

Now, wait a moment! Your point is that just by giving the binary CD to
someone, you are now in violation of the licence.

Correct -- download an ISO, burn onto CD, hand CD to friend w/o
written offer = license violation.

What I tried to
explain is that this situation is anticipated - that the FSF
acknowledges that the recipient won't have received the sources at the
same time in all situations - and that the same distributor is
responsible for providing the sources.

Right. That distributor would be Joe.

As long as they don't deny the
recipient access to the sources, by the same means, they are not
violating the licence.

But Joe didn't give a written offer, and he doesn't even know how to
download the source, and you still haven't showed why that's not a
problem for him.

You have a point about recipients not being immediately and obviously
informed of the things they are entitled to, but that is a matter for
the distributing parties to remedy:

Well, Joe's the distributor to his friend. He got the stuff from
Ubuntu, who will give him source and even have a legal page about it,
but Joe didn't bother reading all that stuff.

that is arguably what happens
when, upon loud squealing about matters of "ideology", distributors
decide to de-emphasise the Free Software aspect of their
distributions.

Yesterday, you were telling me I should inform Ubuntu that they didn't
have enough license information prominently available in the right
places. Are you now claiming that that's simply because people like
me told Ubuntu that they were emphasizing the license information too
much?

In any case, Ubuntu prominently describes "The Ubuntu Promise" with a
link to more information from their front page. Of course, the
download button is prominent as well.

Nevertheless, it is my understanding that anyone
attempting to use or install such distributions do get to see a
summary of the licences;

Yes, and we all know that everybody has been trained to fully read and
understand every single license the click on when installing software.

only people who pass on the software without
inspecting it (which would involve actually inserting the CD and
booting from it) will be unaware of its contents,

Well, to make what I said in my previous comment more clear, I believe
that Joe would have actually installed the software himself without
bothering to read the license. This may be foolish of Joe, but he is
in excellent company -- in one recent unscientific yet (IMO) well-
constructed study, only 12% of users bothered to read the license at
all:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/17/gamestation-grabs-souls-o_n_541549..html

and they could only
be held responsible as reasonably as one's Internet service provider
if that party were asked to provide source packages for "that Linux
distro I downloaded last year".

You still haven't yet provided any credible evidence for this version
of the chain of responsibility. But in any case, I suspect Joe would
have actually installed the software without bothering to read any
license information.

You also have a point about whether people are able to provide sources
at a later date, which might be troublesome if someone gave someone
else a CD with an old version of Ubuntu on it and then were asked to
provide the source packages.

Bingo! My hypothetical Joe would be in serious hot water at this
point.

Naturally, the FSF have attempted to
address these points in version 3 of the GPL.

And I submit that they addressed the problem by making it really clear
that yes, it is Joe's responsibility, in section 6.

I would be interested to
hear the opinion of the FSF and distributors on this matter, but I
think it's absurd to accuse the FSF as operating as you allege
Microsoft do, especially as the distributors are the ones who
encourage the sharing of the installation media.

Well, it's really the entire ecosystem. I have to believe that
everybody at the FSF knows how this works, and even though RMS is a
shrinking violet, I suspect that if he seriously cared about this, he
would work up the courage to address it publicly, much as it pains him
to share his opinions.

Really, if you think distributions should do a better job at educating
their users and helping them uphold any obligations that may apply to
them, you should talk to them about it.

I seriously don't think they, or the FSF, are interested in this, and
I don't think they will harass Joe in any case. My whole point is
that I believe they *could*, and if several people on this thread
can't either (1) understand and believe that; or (2) provide credible
reasons why I am mistaken, after umpteen posts on several days on this
issue, then the entire issue of actual compliance to the license in a
practical fashion (where I consider downloading and burning a DVD of
source to go along with every CD of object impractical) is really a
lot trickier than some people are making it out to be. This bolsters
my personal opinion that one rational response to this complexity is
to avoid the license when possible.

But when I attempt to work
though the issues in a thorough manner in order to thrash out what it
is you really object to - and in practice, the only objections you can
seriously have lie in those two points I mention above (not this
"instant violation" situation, discussed in more detail elsewhere [*])

It's my opinion that the decision to let Joe off the hook is
strategic. Nobody's going to bother Joe, but they *could*. But
there's no percentage in it. I don't actually object to the strategic
decision. It's a marketing decision designed to increase the reach of
the software. Yet instead of embracing the decision yourself, you not
only deny it, but accuse me of bad faith in even suggesting that it
could be a deliberate strategy.

- and all you can do is suggest that other people are trying to
mislead you, I struggle to feel inclined to indulge you further.

I'm suggesting that some other people should consider that perhaps my
viewpoint, while admittedly biased (as are all viewpoints) is not all
that inconsistent with reality.

And suggesting that people have behavioural disorders ("Or because
have OCD?") might be a source of amusement to you, or may be a neat
debating trick in certain circles you admire, but rest assured that I
am neither amused nor impressed, nor are others likely to be.

That was in an honest response to a question you asked "Really, if at
this point you think I'm playing games with you." where I explained
that I don't know what to think, because often, when you claimed to be
addressing my point, you would bring up other red herrings and spend
more time on those, and often assign positions to me that I never
took. When I suggested maybe you don't read carefully enough, you
claimed that's not the root of the problem, so I really don't know
what it is, other than that maybe you need to calm down and reread
what I posted and what you are planning to respond with before pushing
"send". It's really very annoying to be expected to defend positions
I didn't take and statements I didn't make and to have most of your
comments have a subtle dig at my motivations. I honestly don't know
what makes you do that, but it certainly does not bring out the best
in me. I will try to do better if you do too. (BTW, IMO this was one
of your better posts in terms of tone and being on-point, etc., and I
appreciate that.)

Regards,
Pat

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

Don't be silly. That's why I started writing open source software in
the first place. But if I start writing stuff to put in the commons
with strings removed, why would I bother with a license that just adds
some strings back?

To maximise the likelihood of it staying in the commons, of course.

No it doesn't. It just insures that if people actually *distribute* the
software to others, they have to distribute the source. In any case,
for software to remain in the commons, it has to be available where
people can get to it. Somebody has to care enough to maintain a
repository, or it has to be good enough for people to distribute.

The reality is that most software never gets very far. There are millions
of packages and libraries and applications which have few than a dozen
users, thousands with a few hundred, and only one Microsoft Windows.
Since web sites shut down and people lose interest, move on or die,
software can disappear. This is a fact of life, and if you're looking for
any guarantees, neither the GPL nor MIT-style licence will give you one.

But consider the case of Ed Keith, who posted some Boost-licenced
software to the commons. (See his message in this thread, about 30
minutes before yours.) The website he posted it to has shut down and he
has lost his original code.

Obviously no licence can guarantee that people will want to use your
software. Unpopular software will remain unpopular no matter what licence
you use. But it is precisely the viral nature of the GPL that means that,
*if* your software is useful enough for people to want to distribute it,
it will remain in the commons even if you, the original author, are hit
by a bus, your web server crashes, and you lose the original sources.

Under a MIT-style licence, it is possible for you to put a work into the
commons, somebody else to copy it and distribute it as a proprietary
work, then the original to disappear. For all we know, Ed's software has
made it into a thousand different proprietary applications. Nevertheless,
it has been lost from the commons, at least until such time as he
recreates it.

Under the GPL, of course work can be lost from the commons if nobody
distributes it and the original is lost. But the viral nature is designed
so that *if* the software propagates legally, it remains in the commons
and not out of it. This is different from MIT-style licences, which are
indifferent to whether the software propagates in the commons or not, and
proprietary licences, which typically prohibit it.


[...]

Interesting assertion.

I think it is a safe one. So far in the discussion, you and Ed (and
possibly others, I may have forgotten) have repeatedly declared that you
use the MIT licence for work you write for clients. This implies two
obvious business models:

(1) You write open source software, put it on the Internet, and wait for
the donations to come flooding in.

(2) Clients pay you to write software for them, which you then use a non-
GPL open source licence so that they don't need to release the source
code if/when they distribute it further.

Given that you're able to pay for an Internet connection, chances are
that your model is closer to #2. This implies that most of the software
you write is bespoke software for clients, which means they're probably
not distributing it as open source, simply because most software is still
proprietary.

That's true, but what on earth does that have to do with the MIT
license?

The motive behind the GPL is to maximise the amount of code in the
commons. The motive behind the MIT is to maximise the convenience,
regardless of whether people keep your code in the commons or not. Unless
people understand that the *motives* behind the models are different, all
this talk of "freedoms" is just talking at cross-purposes. To those who
want to maximise code in the commons, allowing people to take code out of
the commons isn't a desirable freedom at all; and to those who want to
maximise convenience, obliging people to distribute source code isn't
desirable either.


It's strictly irrelevant to this discussion, but I'm curious why you
choose to licence your work to your clients rather than just working for
hire and assigning copyright to them.

 

[Patrick Maupin]

To maximise the likelihood of it staying in the commons, of course.

Well, it's your opinion that it would do that, and you have some
reasonably good reasons for that opinion, but I don't personally buy
into all of them.

[...]

Obviously no licence can guarantee that people will want to use your
software. Unpopular software will remain unpopular no matter what licence
you use. But it is precisely the viral nature of the GPL that means that,
*if* your software is useful enough for people to want to distribute it,
it will remain in the commons even if you, the original author, are hit
by a bus, your web server crashes, and you lose the original sources.

Sure, there's an additional guarantee. But I don't believe there is a
real distinction. I believe, for example, that all the major Linux
distributions don't try to save bandwidth or disk space by
discriminating against non-GPL packages. For example, the Ubuntu
policy clearly states that to be in "main" rather than "restricted" a
package "must include source code."

Under the GPL, of course work can be lost from the commons if nobody
distributes it and the original is lost. But the viral nature is designed
so that *if* the software propagates legally, it remains in the commons
and not out of it. This is different from MIT-style licences, which are
indifferent to whether the software propagates in the commons or not, and
proprietary licences, which typically prohibit it.

While that is a theoretical difference, I don't believe it is a
practical one. I don't download all the source for my Linux distro,
but they make all the source available.

I think it is a safe one. So far in the discussion, you and Ed (and
possibly others, I may have forgotten) have repeatedly declared that you
use the MIT licence for work you write for clients.

I think there is a serious misunderstanding there. For me, there are
usually 3 types of licenses involved:

1) proprietary license or work-for-hire agreement for the customer's
secret sauce
2) Stuff that the author has put under a permissive license before, or
gets the customer to agree is not part of the secret sauce, and the
customer agrees to allow the author to put under a permissive license
after he writes it
3) Stuff that somebody else wrote under a permissive license

For most of my career, I've been an employee with a work-for-hire
clause, so pretty much all my writing falls under (1) unless I can
make a compelling argument for (2), which is finally starting to
happen a bit more.

This implies two
obvious business models:

(1) You write open source software, put it on the Internet, and wait for
the donations to come flooding in.

(2) Clients pay you to write software for them, which you then use a non-
GPL open source licence so that they don't need to release the source
code if/when they distribute it further.

The bulk of the code is probably (3) Customer dictates the license.

[Snipped a bunch of stuff predicated on a misunderstanding of the way
things work for me]

It's strictly irrelevant to this discussion, but I'm curious why you
choose to licence your work to your clients rather than just working for
hire and assigning copyright to them.

In the past, work-for-hire was practically the rule (during the times
I've been an employee). I've been trying to release open stuff from
the workplace from over a decade with little traction, but it's
finally happening a bit. There are multiple good reasons to open-
source, including the hope for coopetition, and the building of a
resume. Given that other people who might cooperate with me on an
open source project are often similarly situated (working for
proprietary employers who wouldn't necessarily want to worry about the
GPL), using a permissive license makes great sense.

Regards,
Pat

 

[Aahz]

You'll have to explain this to me because I don't quite follow your
assertion. You can sell copyleft-licensed software, although I accept
that you can't set an arbitrarily high price on the sources for
someone who has already acquired a binary distribution.

You can't really sell Open Source software in any practical way; someone
will always undercut you once it's out in the wild. You can only sell
support for the software, which is entirely different.

 

[Stefan Behnel]

Which license you use depends partly on your political philosophy.

Did they close down debian-legal, or why is this thread growing so long?

Ah, I forgot - Friday ...

Stefan

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

I don't actually
recall any suits about violations of the MIT or Apache licenses.

The most obvious example was that the University of Berkley counter-sued
Unix System Laboratories over USL's infringement of the BSD licence.

Admittedly this wasn't the MIT or Apache licence, and the circumstances
were fairly special. It's a fairly safe bet that anyone who is
distributing their software under such a licence is sending an implicit
signal that they don't intend to sue. But it does demonstrate that MIT-
style licences aren't the same as public domain -- they do impose
obligations on the recipient, even if those obligations are much lighter
than those of the GPL.

 

[Patrick Maupin]

The most obvious example was that the University of Berkley counter-sued
Unix System Laboratories over USL's infringement of the BSD licence.

Well, I specifically excluded BSD for this reason. But in any case,
I'd be willing to place a small wager that it's the *only* (rather
than merely the "most obvious") example you can find...

Admittedly this wasn't the MIT or Apache licence, and the circumstances
were fairly special. It's a fairly safe bet that anyone who is
distributing their software under such a licence is sending an implicit
signal that they don't intend to sue.
Right.

But it does demonstrate that MIT-
style licences aren't the same as public domain -- they do impose
obligations on the recipient, even if those obligations are much lighter
than those of the GPL.

And I certainly have never deliberately attempted to mislead on this
point.

Regards,
Pat

 

[Aahz]

Did they close down debian-legal, or why is this thread growing so long?

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ;-)

 

[Albert van der Horst]

That is correct. All "privileges" as you put it are merely things
that a user can do with the code without fear of a lawsuit by the
author, and when an author uses a permissive license, he indicates
that the things that he could possibly find egregious enough to sue
over are very few. For example, if you give an Ubuntu CD to your
friend without giving source code or a written offer of source code,
you have violated the license on quite a few of the programs on the
CD, but not, for example, on Python or Apache, because these licenses
do not attempt to forbid you from doing this.

Bit this is stupid! The GPL is to accomplish a political goal,
an operating system with tools available to all, that can be
modified by anybody capable of doing so.

Enforcements not amenable to that goal will not happen.

It might surprise even RMS himself but ...
The political goal has been large and by accomplished at the expense
of great legal effort and great efforts of Linus Torvalds c.s. Without
the GPL Linux would not exist -- except in the form of an academic
exercise -- and neither would gcc, so neither would Python.
By proxy I estimate that none of the software with a permissive
license you mention would not be available.

You seem to imply that RMS is a nasty guy.
Yes, RMS is a nasty guy. All warriors are! Get in his
way and you're blasted. But some warriors fight for a right
cause ... This really has nothing to do with anything.
The meek will inherit the world, yes, but only after
the second coming.

Regards,
Pat

Groetjes Albert

 

[Patrick Maupin]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:

Steven, did you actually read what he wrote?  If you did, why would you
say something so stupid?

Well, in Steven's defense, my literal words "... labor that could have
been spent elsewhere if someone else had done something differently.
The only time that comes into play in my programming life is when I
have to recode something that is nominally available under the GPL..."
could easily be taken to mean that I have never had to recode
something that was under a proprietary license.

In truth most of what any of us write is probably very similar to
stuff that others have written, so taken in a very literal sense, yes,
obviously, there are several times that I have had to recode
proprietary software. But I was responding to Brendan's "broken
window" analogy, and, rightly or wrongly, I *assumed* he was only
referring to software that was free *at one time* but then was somehow
taken out of the commons. To my knowledge, I've never recoded such
software, and to the extent that anybody might be suggesting that
*all* software belongs in an easily-accessible commons and that nobody
should ever have to recode anything -- well, I could probably be
seduced by the Utopian vision, but I strongly reject that the sort of
rights-pooling mandated by the GPL is the single way to get there.

If everybody believes in the Utopian vision, the GPL is rendered
unnecessary, and to the extent that some people *really* don't believe
in the Utopian vision, the wording of the GPL makes a gentle
transition from proprietary to free difficult for programmers with
feet in both camps. However, the GPL *does* provide a core focal
point for the actual Utopian vision itself, and this does serve a
useful purpose. Personally, I think we are gradually lurching towards
the Utopian vision, and probably at a faster pace than if we only had
the GPL or if we only had permissive licenses. I think even RMS
believes this; as a matter of practicality he will suggest the LGPL or
even permissive licensing under some circumstances.

Regards,
Pat

 

[Patrick Maupin]

Bit this is stupid! The GPL is to accomplish a political goal,
an operating system with tools available to all, that can be
modified by anybody capable of doing so.
Sure.

Enforcements not amenable to that goal will not happen.

Absolutely agreed. I have no real problem with that. I *do* have a
problem with some of the faithful acting like I'm completely wrong and
trying to actively mislead about how the license works, but then I
guess that's par for the course for politics.

It might surprise even RMS himself but ...
The political goal has been large and by accomplished at the expense
of great legal effort and great efforts of Linus Torvalds.
Agreed.

c.s. Without
the GPL Linux would not exist -- except in the form of an academic
exercise

Not sure that's true. Linus would have picked *some* license.
Possibly something like the BSD. He started development using Minix,
which certainly wasn't licensed freely, and which was first released 2
years before the GPL, so the GPL was not instrumental in providing his
first development environment. He might have had to choose a
different compiler if GCC weren't available, but there was a compiler
with Unix. I can believe that the GPL helped Linux gain some momentum
it wouldn't have had otherwise, but I reject your absolute assertion.

-- and neither would gcc,

Well, not gcc itself, but there were compilers around...

so neither would Python.

That I *completely* disagree with. Python was written for the amoeba
O/S, which was in existence and had compilers a good 3 or 4 years
before the first release of gcc.

By proxy I estimate that none of the software with a permissive
license you mention would not be available.

I disagree. If Linux weren't around, MS would not be the sole
winner. Free development would have coalesced around one of the BSDs
(which in absolute numbers are still pretty big projects right now, in
any case, just lacking the mindshare of Linux). As apache and other
projects have shown, the propensity of the few to try to lock things
up can easily be overcome with sheer numbers and willpower -- no
reciprocal license required.

You seem to imply that RMS is a nasty guy.

I think we both agree that people who make history are often
unreasonable. I really don't have a problem with that, but I do have
a problem with apologists claiming it isn't so in his case.

Yes, RMS is a nasty guy. All warriors are! Get in his
way and you're blasted.

So maybe you're not one of the ones I have a problem with.

But some warriors fight for a right
cause ... This really has nothing to do with anything.
The meek will inherit the world, yes, but only after
the second coming.

If you read all the posts carefully, you will see that people arguing
that sometimes permissive licenses are the right ones also allow a
place for the GPL. It is only some of the GPL adherents who accuse
some of the "non-believers" of acting duplicitously, with malice, of
being against "freedom". I reject that characterization of myself,
and when people accuse me of this, I mentally place them in the
category of "religious nutter". Once I have placed someone in that
category, it is sometimes hard for me to respond civilly to them,
especially when they write something stupid. I have not yet placed
you in that category, but I do categorically reject your
interpretation of some of the relevant historical events.

Regards,
Pat

 

[Paul Boddie]

That was in an honest response to a question you asked "Really, if at
this point you think I'm playing games with you." where I explained
that I don't know what to think, because often, when you claimed to be
addressing my point, you would bring up other red herrings and spend
more time on those, and often assign positions to me that I never
took.

You can spare us the excuses. As I said, I was attempting to be
thorough and to explore all possible means of distribution, not least
because this was not your original point - you were originally upset
about Mr Finney's remark, which you still don't accept, but there's
probably no convincing you now - and were then upset at the FSF
definition of a work "based on" or derived from another, leading you
to talk about various strategies for defending potential GPL
violations in the course of copyright infringement litigation. At this
point, it isn't unreasonable to think that you will think of some
other objection to the GPL which you will then have everyone explore.

I have pointed out at least once the section of the GPLv3 which could
reasonably permit someone to receive a binary distribution and there
not be an immediate licence violation, plus an FAQ entry which more or
less addresses the very situation you describe, and I even provided a
link to a discussion of these very issues on the debian-legal mailing
list. You can repeat as often as you like that you don't believe it,
but I have explained my understanding of precisely the "giving CD to a
friend" situation. To summarise: your friend gets the sources from the
same place as the binaries, which is from you. (The SFLC document
seems to treat section 6(d) of GPLv3 as being about Internet
distribution, but given that the term "network server" is only
mentioned after two sentences, and only then in the conditional form,
I regard the FAQ entry I referred to as offering relevant guidance,
and even others [*] have considered the text to be subject to similar
interpretation.)

[*] http://www.gerv.net/hacking/gplv3/draft3/

For the GPLv2 the requirement of a written offer appears to be more
dominant, and I believe the physical media actually shipped by Ubuntu
is accompanied by such an offer. If Ubuntu encourages others to share
media (produced in whichever fashion) or software without any written
offer then it is, as I remarked before, a matter that should be
discussed with them. Yes, it is unfortunate that the obligations are
not communicated, and that is one reason why there is a successor to
that licence, but it merely indicates that the balance of obligation
and tolerance in the licence, maintained without enabling the
widespread and malicious circumvention of the licence, is difficult to
achieve. It doesn't invalidate the intent of the licence, and if
anything it validates the adoption of GPLv3 in preference to GPLv2.

[...]

(BTW, IMO this was one of your better posts in terms of tone and being
on-point, etc., and I appreciate that.)

As I said before, spare me the condescension. Making a remark that
someone has a behavioural disorder - a matter, whether true or not,
that should have no influence on the course of any discussion -
especially when that person has attempted to provide explanations for
every quibble spontaneously raised over the course of several days,
not only indicates a certain level of hypocrisy, but it indicates that
as far as you are concerned any remark about a person's mental health
or well-being is fair game if it serves to belittle that person's
standing and ridicule what that person has written.

Paul

 

[Ethan Furman]

As I said before, spare me the condescension.

Spare us your self-righteous bull-crap.

Do you think we haven't seen your false accusations and made-up motives
against Patrick Maupin? If I cared more and/or had more time, I'd make
a summary -- but quite frankly Pat has defended himself quite well,
while being very reasonable, and has said at least twice (more, I'm
sure) that the choice of license is up to the author, and that there are
good reasons for choosing any of the free licenses (including the GPL).

~Ethan~

 

[Aahz]

Not at all. I've been selling all the software I write for clients for
the past ten years, and it's all free software. It's been very practical
for me and those I've worked with.

You can't sell free software like selling loaves of bread, but that's a
much more limited case and a far cry from your claim. Selling free
software is quite practical and a good way to fund development of
software that otherwise wouldn't be written as free software.

From my POV, if you're not selling COTS, you're really selling support
and consulting services, because that's what keeps your competitors from
just picking up your software and reselling it for cheaper. BTDT.

 

[geremy condra]

This whole conversation is ridiculous, and better suited to slashdot than
python-list. Is it really necessary for it to continue?

Geremy Condra

 

[Ethan Furman]

[It is impractical to] sell free software like selling loaves of
bread, but that's a much more limited case and a far cry from your
claim [that it's impractical to sell free software]. Selling free
software is quite practical and a good way to fund development of
software that otherwise wouldn't be written as free software.

From my POV, if you're not selling COTS, you're really selling support
and consulting services, because that's what keeps your competitors
from just picking up your software and reselling it for cheaper. BTDT.

This thread has revealed some staggering gulfs in concepts as held by
different people. For example, I don't think it's at all germane to the
definition of “sell FOO†that “your competitors can pick up the FOO and
resell it cheaperâ€. Whether they can or not, that doesn't change that
fact that one is selling FOO.

Moreover, I don't try to prevent my competitors from reselling the
software (so long as they don't misrepresent who holds copyright or
further restrict the terms). That's part and parcel of the freedoms in
the software. Indeed, I find that helps the customers trust me more and
tend to come back when they want something else new; and my customers
are free to show others the solutions I've already implemented.

Thus is an ongoing business relationship crafted, including return
customers and referrals for new work. It really is practical to sell
free software.

This doesn't make sense to me, but I'm willing to learn -- how do you do
this in practice? Are you really selling the software, or rather
selling things like setup, support, new code (or time to code), etc?

~Ethan~

 

[Delaney, Timothy (Tim)]

From: Ben Finney

This thread is already off-topic and too long. I'm conflicted about my role in that;
I have endeavoured only to address falsehoods that IMO were not otherwise being addressed.

So I'll try to keep this brief.



Perhaps in private email we can discuss what you mean by "really selling the software";
it's too off-topic here. By my understanding of that term, yes, I am selling software.


All of the above, depending on the project.

Considering that's one of the only two interesting things that have come
out of this
discussion, if you're willing to discuss that in public (in another
thread) I'd be very
interested in reading it.

BTW, the other interesting thing is the inadvertent license violations
where I tend to
think Pat has the right interpretation, but am not sure.

For the record, I tend to be in favour of permissive licenses both for
releasing my own
code and using others' (not least because I am employed by a company and
it makes my work
easier), but there are good reasons for using any license so long as you
understand the
consequences of your decision.

Tim Delaney