ivtools licensing caveats

From why-ivtools.html:
    but we'll carry on with the license the way it is, the way it has always been

That'll teach me to state things with such absolute certainty. Since writing that I've come to realize there might be future circumstances that would merit some evolution to the copyright permission notice of ivtools. Whoa, that doesn't mean it's gonna get all proprietary. Read on.

It could happen that some organization would be interested in making significant contributions to ivtools if their work could receive some of the protections offered by licenses like the Free Software Foundation's LGPL. In that event, to protect the interests of the stakeholders in ivtools, I would consider making changes to the license, but these changes would be limited as follows:

  • There would be no additional restrictions placed on binary distributions
  • Additional restrictions on source distributions would not apply to any derivative C++ classes that were seeded by cloning ivtools classes or to any larger work in which it was embedded (i.e. the license would not be viral in these cases).
  • The new license would conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines
  • The new license would conform to the Free Software Foundation's definition of free software
  • Recently (with ivtools-0.7.4, Feb. 27th 1999), a COPYRIGHT.proposed was added to the ivtools source tree that attempts some of the above. All the comments received to date have been neutral or opposed to the change. So it looks unlikely this will be adopted with ivtools-0.8.

    Scott Johnston
    President, Vectaport Inc.