[Aldor-l] Aldor is or is not free?

[Timo Jyrinki]

Hi. I was supposed to answer one more time to this thread. Thanks to
Martin for fixing the front page with the reference to semi-free. It's
now correct so there are no problems anymore.

Regarding the possibilities of becoming free software some day:

Bill Page wrote:
> specifically the terms of the GPL. It seems that there is a rather
> deep disagreement with the choice of GPL as the best means to promote
> open software development. It seems unlikely to me that this
> philosophical disagreement can be resolved in a rational manner.

BSD license would probably be preferred in this case as Axiom is BSD
licensed. There would be also a possibility, in case I understood
correctly possible objections to GPL, to release as GPL while keeping
all the copyrights _and_ asking copyright assignments to be done so that
there is a possibility of having both the Free, GPL'd version that
cannot be made non-free (because it's GPL, not BSD), and any non-free /
closed versions as needed. This is what MySQL is succesfully making
business with, ie. in addition to services business which Free software
business is usually about, also license selling of a version that the
customer can keep closed even when making changes / distributing.

BSD would be the best option in this case, but just to remind about the
fact that there is a possibility of having both the GPL'd version and
keeping all copyrights of the official GPL'd version to itself, if it's
somehow closer to what's being wanted.

> Personally I don't understand the issue over the "royalty free" clause
> since it seems to me that this is implicit in both GPL and BSD -
> unless I grossly misunderstand the intent.

Do you mean what's wrong with Aldor Public License's royalty free
clause? Basically just the fact that it makes Aldor non-free (as defined
by the free software and open source definitions), stopping its
"consumption" in the free software eco-system - one cannot include it
into any free system, and cannot sell any combination of software that
includes Aldor. After all, a lot of the free software business is done
by selling eg. distributions / deployments of software, or doing
software development of eg. Axiom when asked to, which is commercial
business, which now must exclude Aldor from the software stack that can
be used. Free software requires the freedom of using the software in any
way fit.

GPL and BSD require that the source code must be provided to someone
receiving the program itself, if the receiver wants it, but part of the
freedoms is the requirement to be able to ask money anyway, for the
convenience of eg. ready-made builts / complex combinations of different
service, or any other service involved in it. So the code is free also
as in no money, but services may include also eg. writing more code to
the customer's needs or anything.

> Yes! :-) This is an excellent and much anticipated result of making
> the source code of Aldor  more widely available. I think we need to do
> everything possible to encourage this and make possible a
> collaborative environment where these improvements will be shared.

Yes, no matter what Aldor is now probably more easily developed than before.

BR,
Timo Jyrinki