License question

• Oleg

  said

  Am I right.. If I have commercial project using Cocktail’s library I have to open all sources of the complete project? not only changes in Cocktail library..

• lexa

  said

  Hello Oleg

  Welcome here. This is a very good question !

  We are working for a client with Cocktail, developing a proprietary framework with it. And they asked the same question last week.

  It seems that the answer is yes, with the GPL, for a library like Cocktail. And this is a mistake in the choice of the license. It is due to the fact that our other open source projects (amfPHP and Silex) are software with a plugin system, and not libraries.

  So we will change Cocktail license to allow the use of Cocktail for proprietary projects. I guess we will go for a MIT license.

  Do you plan to use Cocktail soon? This would give us a reason to do the change quickly.

  Regards
  Alex

• Oleg

  said

  Hello Alex,

  Thank you for the quick answer and for the very interesting project.
  I have planned to evaluate it first.. If it goes well we are planning to use it quite soon like in one month.. or so

  Best regards
  Oleg

• lexa

  said

  Ok, here are some new information, to try to start a discussion around the lisence question : in the comments, you will find suggestions for the opa language which has also libraries etc.

  http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4336

• James

  said

  Is the plan still to switch licenses from GPL to MIT or something else? We would like to use Cocktail but can’t release the source for anything we do with it. Unless of the licensing terms change.

  Thanks,
  james

• lexa

  said

  Sure!

  We will choose between BSD and MIT.

  The official release of Cocktail on haxelib is imminent, so we are working hard on the technical part. But we have to fix this issue before the release, so thank you to remind us the importance of this matter .

• lexa

  said

  After some researches, this page http://www.rebol.com/docs/bsd-mit-license.html concerning BSD and MIT:

  “The main purpose of both these licenses is to allow people to use, distribute, and modify your code, but preserve your copyright credit, license method, and disclaimer of warranties.”

  And many projects use both MIT and BSD…

  I like the idea to have Cocktail available under the MIT and BSD licenses, what do you think?

• lexa

  said

  Here is my proposal:

  http://www.silexlabs.org/groups/labs/cocktail/docs/cocktail-licensing

• James

  said

  Hi lexa,
  That looks great to me. I look forward to cocktails release on haxelib, good luck and keep up the great work.

  James

• codam

  said

  James, Oleg, if not confidential, what are the kind of projects on which you are using (or planning to use) cocktail ?

• codam

  said

  @lexa I agree with your proposal

• James

  said

  I can’t say much but it’s a real time bidding, trading auction type webapp.

• jean-baptistequenot

  said

  I would just use the BSD license. There is no need to use both. Both are very permissive.

• codam

  said

  As decided by Silex Labs on august 24th 2012, the license has been modified to MIT.

• codam

  said

  The next Cocktail github tag will include the new license