Simple Solution to Ruby Licensing Issues/Misunderstandings

[Gully Foyle]

After hearing a lot of confusion abour ruby licensing, I decided to
summarize and offer a few SIMPLE, PAINLESS solutions for consideration.

FACT #1: The ruby license is not well-known. It isn't even listed as
an OSI-approved license at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

FACT #2: The ruby license is frequently misunderstood as seen on
comp.lang.ruby.

FACT #3: There are well-known, well-understood and widely-used
opensource licenses that Ruby can use without changing the fundamental
rights of the author or user as provided in the current Ruby license.

Three Possible Solutions (out of many) are:

SOLUTION #1 - BSD license (very well-known, commercial-use friendly)
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

SOLUTION #2 - MIT license (even simpler but not as well-known)
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

SOLUTION #3 - Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Here's one that is user-friendly (explanation + full legal)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

This was selected by filling out the form here:
http://creativecommons.org/license/

OTHER SOLUTIONS:
For a HUGE list of OSI-approved licenses, see here:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

 

[Aredridel]

#5: Get OSI to list the license.

 

[Gully Foyle]

#5: Get OSI to list the license.

That doesn't solve the problem of people not understanding the license
or people not being sure if it is "commercial-use friendly".

The most effective solution is to use one that is already widely used
and known to be commercial-use friendly.

EMPLOYEE: we'd like to use ruby programming language. the ruby license
seems friendly and meets our needs.

CORPORATION: We've pre-approved Artistic, BSD and MIT licenses. GPL or
LGPL requires special approval from your project manager. All others
need to be submitted to our legal department by the CIO or CTO and that
could take weeks.

EMPLOYEE: ummm....never mind, we'll just use perl.

 

[Mark Hubbart]

That doesn't solve the problem of people not understanding the license
or people not being sure if it is "commercial-use friendly".

Or how about this: Ruby is dual-licensed; it can be used under the Ruby
license terms, or under the LGPL. Would it be problematic to add the
BSD license in the mix?

That way, the people who are comfortable with things the way they are
won't have to change anything; but those who are nervous can be
reassured by the BSD part.

cheers,
Mark

 

[Edgardo Hames]

Or how about this: Ruby is dual-licensed; it can be used under the Ruby
license terms, or under the LGPL. Would it be problematic to add the
BSD license in the mix?

Is that allowed by the mix-in mechanism supported by Ruby ;-)

Ed

 

[Phil Tomson]

Is that allowed by the mix-in mechanism supported by Ruby ;-)

Ed

module LGPL
....
end

module RubysOwn
....
end

module BSDLicense
....
end

class RubyLicense
include LGPL
include RubysOwn
include BSDLicense
end



....seems to work ;-)

Phil