Re: Lua License

["Nick Trout" <nick@...>]

> > Perhaps you could suggest a more suitable license.
>
> I'm not going to take you up on that, but to summarize you have two choices
> as far as free software.  (I forgot the pill colors in that Matrix scene.)

So if I take the wrong pill, I'm trapped inside the huge imaginary Gnu.

> There is free software that stays free (GPL, etc), and there is free
> software that allows non-free derivations (BSD, Lua, etc).  "Free software"
> basically means software that gives anyone the right to alter, distribute,
> and profit from it.

So you have to be careful which libraries you use if you want to issue a BSD
or Lua license. You cant issue a BSD license if you have used GPL code. But
you can issue a GPL or LGPL license if you use BSD or Lua code.

My thinking behind issuing an LGPL license was that it would encourage
development of VisLua. But, we don't really want to stop people using it for
complicated licensing issues. If LGPL and your code contained none of VisLua
in the distribution you have no problem, I think (as you have used the code
but not included any). Its only if you included a portion of VisLua that you
would have to allow access to your derived libraries to link with (but no
source code because we are LGPL not GPL). But, Lua can be embedded and you may
want to include the debugger (or all of the IDE) with your distribution (a la
Unreal). In this case you'd have to make your libraries available for users to
tinker with, but since you've included the IDE for this very purpose, this is
not at odds with your objective? (eg. users may write addon code mods, bound
to Lua). GPL VisLua would result in the entire project having to release all
the code if VisLua was included. This is clearly unsuitable for games and most
commercial products (in the eyes of most employers certainly). So LGPL may be
good and okay for everyone for VisLua.

Sorry if this is all noise to you.

Regards,
Nick