On Apr 8, 2005 10:44 PM, Jim Starkey <jas@...> wrote:

> I looked at Botan early in the process when my search was limited to DES
> and SHA-1. Botan met most requirements, but had a configuration step
> requiring Perl, which stopped me cold on WinXP. I really need a library
> that I can just compile. Maybe Botan could be adapted, but at the time
> I was looking for something that I could just use. I've broadened the
> scope, so I should take another look.

Perl comes standard with any flavour of Unix you can encounter
nowdays, and ActiveState port is very straitforward to install on any
Windows version past Win98. So it is not a big issue, in my opinion.

> >Whatever you opinion about GPL is, I do not think it is fair to call
> >the work with such restrictions "unencumbered" or, indeed, "public
> >domain".
> >
> Sorry, but I have a commercial product and don't want any of my system
> contaminated with GPLed source code lest I become a litgation target of
> the Free Software Foundation.

Sure, I did not in any way questioned your right to abstain form GPL code.

> Young put his work out there so any
> developer can use and build upon it, which is something that I admire.
> Firebird has the same philosophy.

Not true. By excluding developers who prefer to license their work
under GPL, he did exclude whole lot of developers, just different ones
than those who are excluded by GPL.
An argument can be made that new-style BSD license is "more free" than
GPL, but old-style BSD (aka BSD with attribution) is most assuredly
not. This topic was explained numerous times all over the Internet, so
I will not repeat the reasoning here.

> The GPL is trying to build an
> alternative world without commercial software, and idea that I do not
> adhere to. For the record, Netfrastructure code that I've donated to
> Firebird has a proviso that it can't be re-issued under other
> licenses.

Here is the first of possible problems: what if you want to modify SSLeay?
If modifications are minor, you simply change the files and leave the
license as-is, since it explicitly allows modifications. But as the
number of modifications grow, you might come to a point when there is
more of your code than original code in the module. So what do you do
then? According to your principles, the module should be put under
your preferred license, but that would be a violation of the original
license.
Now imagine the big project with lots of components each requiring its
own license, and forbidding to change it. That is what once happened
to BSD.

And finally, just to stay on-topic: does not no-relicensing provision
contradict the terms of IDPL itself? What do other developers think of
incorporating such code into the project?