[Admin] Re: Eclipse application

[Iban Hatchondo]

Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
> I definitely approve of the Eclipse project's application.
> 
> I feel compelled to point out your choise of license, however. 
> 
> Nothing wrong with GPL, but most Lisp projects prefer MIT/BSD-style
> for various reasons. For example, simpler interoperability between
> libraries, or a conscious choise to promote Lisp over other languages,
> or preferring of free-as-gift over free-as-fsf-defines-it.
> 
> Is GPL a deliberate and premeditated choise, or have you adopted it
> "by default"? If the former then everything is ok, but if latter
> then I urge you to reconsider.

I must confess that I took a long time reading almost everything on the 
BSD and GPL licence couple of years ago. But as far as I remember I 
choose the GPL because I was prefering the free-as-fsf-defines-it for an 
application like a window manager, that could be (if we are lucky) 
distribute with some linux distro on something like this. More over a 
window manager is not a really inovating application and almost all 
"algorithm" and tricky stuff are well known. So I'm not too worried for 
the the free-as-gift thing :o). About the "or a conscious choise to 
promote Lisp over other languages" I also think that using a GPL licence 
  sometimes could be a good idea:
  people that would like to be inspired or integrate would be forced to 
put the GPL desclaimer about your Lisp stuff and that way would promote 
the langage as well ?

I have a netbsd maintainer at work and I already had such discussions 
(that can be very long :o). What I retain is that we NEED all those 
different license and as you point: it is important to correctly and 
know why we are choosing one or an ohter.

Best regards,
Iban.