Re: The impact of a module's license on the requiring Lua program

[Matthew Wild <mwild1@...>]

On 11 April 2012 15:20, David Favro <lua@meta-dynamic.com> wrote:
> On 04/10/2012 03:56 AM, Dimitris Papavasiliou wrote:
>> In case this is about luaprompt I should note that I'll be re-releasing it
>> under the MIT license once I figure out exactly how to do that since it is
>> part of a larger project which I'd like to keep GPL'd.
>
> I'm very saddened to hear that.  Would you mind sharing the reason why?  I
> certainly hope that it is not because of the bullying of some of the
> intolerant members of this list.
>
> I personally support the freedom of developers to release their own code
> under any license that they like, and I must say that I find the tone of
> some of the discussion on this list to be very disheartening.
>

I couldn't say that I saw any bullying. The simple fact is that many
(most) people around here have MIT-licensed projects already, and
releasing a GPL library will prevent many potential users from using
the library. Thus obviously upsetting those people.

I too support the freedom of developers to use whatever licence they
wish. I'm sure that Dimitris is quite capable of leaving his library
as GPL if that's what he really feels is what he wants to do.

Choice of licence will always be a contentious issue, because which
licence is "better" is extremely circumstantial. It depends on the
author's personal opinion, and what their goals are for the software,
and why they publish it.

As an example, *my* opinion is that I write software for myself. I
like doing it. I publish it because I feel like sharing, to help
others. I have no care what others are doing with my code as long as
they're happy (I have even helped people integrate it into
closed-source software). Despite this, I would absolutely still use
GPL for a future project if I felt it was right for that project.

Regards,
Matthew