POLL: Possible change to the CSLA .NET license going forward

POLL: Possible change to the CSLA .NET license going forward

Old forum URL: forums.lhotka.net/forums/t/11824.aspx


RockfordLhotka posted on Friday, February 08, 2013

[Poll]

RockfordLhotka replied on Friday, February 08, 2013

To answer the first question that popped into my mind: No, this change would not have a retroactive effect. Versions prior to 4.5.20 would remain covered by the existing proprietary license. Only 4.5.20 and higher would be affected by the license change.

skagen00 replied on Friday, February 08, 2013

The first answer that popped into my mind was, "whatever you want it to be".

Me, I've never had to deal with this situation and have no clue about the differences between them.

As a long-time user of CSLA (in a commercial product), is there a difference between them that materially impacts me? Or are you just looking for suggestions from people who have gone through this sort of deliberation before?

 

RockfordLhotka replied on Friday, February 08, 2013

I would value input from anyone who's gone through this before, but that is rarified air.

I am more interested in any objections people might have from a "user" perspective - like would such a change cause disruption for you, and if so how?

Honestly though, I suspect that (if anything) using a more standard license will reduce any disruption, especially these non-viral licenses that are extremely comparable to my existing license.

ajj3085 replied on Friday, February 08, 2013

Just curious but what's the motivation to change if they're all pretty much the same?

RockfordLhotka replied on Friday, February 08, 2013

Andy

Just curious but what's the motivation to change if they're all pretty much the same?

I'm also looking at moving the CSLA repository somewhere new - to a cloud service - probably either github or codeplex. It is easier to do that if your OSS project is using a standard OSS license.

rfcdejong replied on Saturday, February 09, 2013

Those two licenses seem much alike, just some differences

Apache requires to keep a record of "state changes" in each modified  file. It has some overhead doing so.
Apache requires to include the full text license at all time.

Ms PL does not allow any sublicense, meaning that the original license and copyright must be retained.


I did not vote because i rather see CSLA be going to be changed to the "BSD 2-Clause License (FreeBSD)" license. Have you considered it? It is more free and it is open as well and it has the most important stated

Software is released without warranty and the software/license owner cannot be charged for damages.
 

 

RockfordLhotka replied on Monday, February 11, 2013

@rfcdejong I want a license that requires attribution - keeping copyright notices in the code.

Otherwise the FreeBSD or MIT licenses would be quite attractive because they are as simple as you can get.

Call me selfish or whatever, but after spending ~18 years of my life building up CSLA and providing it to the world (along with a ton of amazing contributions and huge amounts of effort by numerous other contributors), I guess I'm just unwilling to forego attribution on that work.

nhwilly replied on Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Nor should you.

 

ajj3085 replied on Monday, February 11, 2013

RockfordLhotka
I'm also looking at moving the CSLA repository somewhere new - to a cloud service - probably either github or codeplex. It is easier to do that if your OSS project is using a standard OSS license.

Ah, well that makes sense.  I voted for MS-PL; it seems very simple, and I like the idea of moving Csla to CodePlex.

shawndewet replied on Friday, February 08, 2013

The MS-PL says : "If you distribute any portion of the software in compiled or object code form, you may only do so under a license that complies with this license."

Does that mean that I can only deploy CSLA-based projects in open source projects that I write? What about bespoke software that I develop for clients? Those certainly won't be open source?

RockfordLhotka replied on Friday, February 08, 2013

@shawdewet, MS-PL is not viral if that's what you are asking. It basically disallows the use of the software in a GPL project, but not in a commercial project (as long as you keep the copyright notices intact in the CSLA code).

Although I've always found copyleft and that stuff to be intellectually curious and somewhat amusing, I have never bought into the social agenda inherent in that licensing model. Nor do I think viral licenses are commercially viable - and you'll note that most OSS projects that do use viral licenses use it as a "poison pill" technique so you have to buy a commercial license to actually use the product. That is disingenuous imo.

k4gdw replied on Friday, February 08, 2013

I really didn't notice anything about any of the three choices that would make me hesitate to use them.  That said, I've always been partial to the Apache license because it actually gives guidance on how to apply the license by including a brief bit of boilerplate in each file to which the license applies.  That makes it really easy to specify it as part of the standard file template for your code/text editor of choice.

I'm definitely glad you're not choosing one of the various GPL licenses.  That monstrosity is far to complex.

chrduf replied on Monday, February 11, 2013

We are fine with either one.

Copyright (c) Marimer LLC