[FreeMarker-user] Changing license to Apache License 2.0?

Discussion:

Daniel Dekany

2013-06-28 09:55:18 UTC

I would like to change the licence of FreeMarker from the 4-clause
BSD-style licence to Apache License 2.0. The copyright owner would
also change from "The Visigoth Software Society" (VSS) to "Attila
Szegedi, Dániel Dékány, Jonathan Revusky" (they are the current
project owners according the CLA) as VSS is inactive. This I would
like to do as soon as possible, like even starting from FreeMarker
2.3.21.

Attila, Jonathan, do you agree, or want something differently?

Anybody has advices or any comments on this mater? (Like, if you
depend heavily on FreeMarker and have a company lawyer to ask, that
would great. All help is appreciated!)

--
Thanks,
Daniel Dekany

Daniel Dekany

2013-07-24 13:41:07 UTC

Permalink

The problem with our licence is the advertisement clause. With that,
our license is not even OSI-approved (anymore?), and most importantly,
many has complained about this restriction. To fix that, we could just
switch to 3-clause BSD license. But I thought that if we change the
licence anyway, ASL 2 would be better, as it's far more widely used
and as such more recognized in the Java world. Corporate layers can
have surprising ideas (like, some may will miss the patent
indemnification clause in the future... I really don't know), so I
thought the safest thing to do is to join the herd.

That ASL 2 is incompatible with GPLv2 is a good point, however, given
how omnipresent ASL 2 is in the Java ecosystem, I wonder what will use
FreeMarker (especially a new version of it) and yet not have any ASL 2
dependency. So is that a real problem?

Note the other important change as well: the owner will change. Any
comments on that?
--
Thanks,
Daniel Dekany

I'm somewhat interested in the "why".
The only substantial difference I see between the two licenses is
that Apache also has patent indemnification clauses. Admittedly, I
think that's a good thing, but I'm wondering if that's a substantial
need for most of our users.
One specific issue where BSD is more permissive than Apache is that
BSD is one-way compatible with GPLv2 (e.g. you can incorporate BSD
software into GPLv2 software), but Apache isn't, specifically
because of the patent indemnification language that GPLv2 lacks;
Apache is one-way compatible with GPLv3 though.
So, one consequence of the switch from BSD to Apache would be that
people could no longer incorporate FreeMarker into software that's
offered under GPLv2. I'm not saying that I'm against the move, just
saying that I want to make sure everybody understands the implications.
Attila.
I would like to change the licence of FreeMarker from the 4-clause
BSD-style licence to Apache License 2.0. The copyright owner would
also change from "The Visigoth Software Society" (VSS) to "Attila
Szegedi, Dániel Dékány, Jonathan Revusky" (they are the current
project owners according the CLA) as VSS is inactive. This I would
like to do as soon as possible, like even starting from FreeMarker
2.3.21.
Attila, Jonathan, do you agree, or want something differently?
Anybody has advices or any comments on this mater? (Like, if you
depend heavily on FreeMarker and have a company lawyer to ask, that
would great. All help is appreciated!)
--
Thanks,
Daniel Dekany

Matthew Copeland

2013-07-24 16:57:29 UTC

Permalink

In case this information is useful to those looking at this, the FSF
seems recommends the ASLv2 over the BSD licenses for permissive licenses,
even with the GPL 2.0 incompatibility, due to the more clearly defined
patent language. (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#apache2 /
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ModifiedBSD) Since the FSF
has been encouraging GPLed projects to move from a strict GPLv2 only to
either "GPLv2 or later" or "GPLv3 or later", this stance doesn't surprise
me. I think a lot of people of started to become very concerned about the
patent issue due to all of the patent troll lawsuits going around in the
last few years and the with patent office issuing a lot more (rather
broadly defined) technical patents.

Matthew

Post by Daniel Dekany
The problem with our licence is the advertisement clause. With that,
our license is not even OSI-approved (anymore?), and most importantly,
many has complained about this restriction. To fix that, we could just
switch to 3-clause BSD license. But I thought that if we change the
licence anyway, ASL 2 would be better, as it's far more widely used
and as such more recognized in the Java world. Corporate layers can
have surprising ideas (like, some may will miss the patent
indemnification clause in the future... I really don't know), so I
thought the safest thing to do is to join the herd.
That ASL 2 is incompatible with GPLv2 is a good point, however, given
how omnipresent ASL 2 is in the Java ecosystem, I wonder what will use
FreeMarker (especially a new version of it) and yet not have any ASL 2
dependency. So is that a real problem?
Note the other important change as well: the owner will change. Any
comments on that?
--
Thanks,
Daniel Dekany

Attila Szegedi

2013-07-25 10:42:27 UTC

Permalink

Oh, I'm totally fine with owner names' change.

Yeah, changing to 3-clause BSD would also work. I'm actually fine with
Apache too; if anyone's using FM with GPLv2, they won't be able to update,
but then it's at least a decision we consciously made.

Jonathan Revusky

2013-08-08 08:48:41 UTC

Permalink

Sorry to have been so slow. I have no objection to the proposed license
changes.

JR

Post by Attila Szegedi
Oh, I'm totally fine with owner names' change.
Yeah, changing to 3-clause BSD would also work. I'm actually fine with
Apache too; if anyone's using FM with GPLv2, they won't be able to update,
but then it's at least a decision we consciously made.

Daniel Dekany

2013-08-09 08:58:36 UTC

Permalink

So then, starting FreeMarker 2.3.21:
- The license will be "Apache License, Version 2.0"
- The copyright owner will change from "Visigoth Software Society" to:
"Attila Szegedi, Daniel Dekany, Jonathan Revusky"

If anybody has anything comments on this matter, go ahead.
--
Thanks,
Daniel Dekany

Sorry to have been so slow. I have no objection to the proposed license changes.
JR
Oh, I'm totally fine with owner names' change.
Yeah, changing to 3-clause BSD would also work. I'm actually fine
with Apache too; if anyone's using FM with GPLv2, they won't be able
to update, but then it's at least a decision we consciously made.
The problem with our licence is the advertisement clause. With that,
our license is not even OSI-approved (anymore?), and most importantly,
many has complained about this restriction. To fix that, we could just
switch to 3-clause BSD license. But I thought that if we change the
licence anyway, ASL 2 would be better, as it's far more widely used
and as such more recognized in the Java world. Corporate layers can
have surprising ideas (like, some may will miss the patent
indemnification clause in the future... I really don't know), so I
thought the safest thing to do is to join the herd.
That ASL 2 is incompatible with GPLv2 is a good point, however, given
how omnipresent ASL 2 is in the Java ecosystem, I wonder what will use
FreeMarker (especially a new version of it) and yet not have any ASL 2
dependency. So is that a real problem?
Note the other important change as well: the owner will change. Any
comments on that?
--
Thanks,
Daniel Dekany

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Daniel Dekany

2013-08-09 09:10:59 UTC

Permalink

Starting FreeMarker 2.3.21:

- The license will be "Apache License, Version 2.0". Thus we will have
a well-known standard licence instead of a custom one.

- The copyright owner will change from "Visigoth Software Society" to
"Attila Szegedi, Daniel Dekany, Jonathan Revusky". They are/were the
key developers/maintainers of the FreeMarker 2.x series, so there's
no real change behind this, only a legal change, as Visigoth
Software Society is practically defunct.

If anybody has any comments on this matter, please tell us!

--
Thanks,
Daniel Dekany