[Accessibility] AT Device Shared I/O

Doug Beattie dbb at linkexplorer.com
Wed Sep 10 08:50:04 PDT 2003


In reading through the lsb-futures page on Selection Criteria at:
"http://www.linuxbase.org/futures/criteria/index.html" under the 
Phase 1 - Identification section called "License" it says:

The component should have at least one compliant implementation
available under an Open Source license that also promotes a "No Strings
Attached" environment for developers. This means that the developer
would be able to develop and deploy their software however they choose
using at least one standard implementation. This is interpreted to mean
that at least one implementation is available under a license that meets
the Open Source Definition but it does not prohibit propriatry usage.
The rationale for this criteria is very similar to that of the LGPL.

The "Open Source Definition" is a URL pointing to:
"http://opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.html"

I believe we should follow the same policy.

Doug

On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 08:33:30AM -0600, Doug Beattie wrote:
> Bill:
> 
> Re:
> 
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 11:20:30AM +0100, Bill Haneman wrote:
> > On Tue, 2003-09-09 at 20:45, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > > Disadvantage???
> > > 
> > > Some would call that an advantage.
> > 
> > It's a major disadvantage in a library if you wish to standardize on it,
> > and no alternate implementations with other licenses exist.  GPL
> > libraries are the ones that are 'viral' to anything linking to them, and
> > thus they would not be suitable candidates for standardization.
> > 
> > The current legal thinking appears (to my non-expert ears) to be that
> > GPL libraries on a platform are OK under certain circumstances provided
> > they use standard APIs which are also available in non-GPL form.  Most
> > vendors seem to want to bundle both GPL and non-GPL versions with their
> > platform in this case.
> > 
> > This brltty situation has already caused some issues with other braille
> > packages and is something we'd like to see changed for that reason; it
> > limits the usefulness of brltty.
> > 
> > I do think we need to keep these things in mind insofar as we make
> > reference to existing implementations of APIs which we consider for
> > adoption.
> > 
> > - Bill
> >  
> 
> This is a good point you raise on the licensing of standards libraries.
> I am going to also pass this along to the folks doing the general LSB
> work. They too should be thinking about this as well as all groups so
> we allow both commercial as well as non-commercial to build on what
> the standards provide without worry of either losing IP rights or
> having to deal with/provide software that works with proprietary libs.
> Both sides need to be watched out for.
> 
> Doug
> -- 
> Doug Beattie
> dbb at linkexplorer.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Accessibility mailing list
> Accessibility at freestandards.org
> http://www.freestandards.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/accessibility

-- 
Doug Beattie
dbb at linkexplorer.com




More information about the Accessibility mailing list