Re: Licensing question

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> Nonetheless, repeating myself, we need an official word from FSF on GPL
> compatibility, or we need the Lua authors/ Tecgraf to kindly switch to a
> standard license.

We are considering switching Lua license to a standard license, but we
cannot find a suitable one. Maybe we do not understand them, but it seems
to us that none of the "usual" licenses cover the kind of problems we
are having with the current license (besides the FSF sanction):

- "The modified BSD license": this seems a strong candidate. However, it
does not cover the documentation, but only the software itself.

- X11 license says: "provided that the above copyright notice(s) and
this permission notice appear in all copies of the Software and that
[both] appear in supporting documentation". Notice that they demand that
the copyright notice appear in the documentation *and* in the software.
How does this apply to binary distributions? Must the binary ("the
software") contain the copyright notice?

- expat (or MIT) license: "The above copyright notice and this
permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial
portions of the Software." Again, how does that apply to binary
(re)distribuition?

-- Roberto