Re: [seul-edu] SEUL Licensing (was: Our presence at trade shows)

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2000 at 03:23:30PM +0800, Hilaire Fernandes wrote:
>  > instance, geda.seul.org is coming along very nicely to fill in the gaps
>  > of electronic design automation software. As another example, the license
>  > for wxFTP was non-free when we first adopted the project, and by showing
>  > Alexy that more people would use his software if he made it really free,
>  > I eventually convinced him to change the license.
>
> Does this project start on Seul

No, it started as a closed-source (but gratis) ftp client, and
I thought it looked like it had potential, so I offered to host
development and distribution for it. I kept bugging the author
about how he should change the license, and a year or so later                                                           he decided to start distributing under the Artistic License
(http://www.seul.org/archives/seul/announce/Dec-1998/msg00000.html).

It is possible that we wouldn't have needed gFTP (gftp.seul.org -- no,
it didn't start at seul either) if WXftp had gone free earlier. Who knows.

> Worst, this doesn't encourage people to release their code under free
> licence for this reason Seul should stop promoting commercial port but
> instead promoting free port. Besides companies, under Windows,
> teachers tend to develop good software very often licensed as
> shareware, I am sure the SEUL double language (Free soft and
> commercial port) will not encourage them to porting under free term.

Are you sure? I'm not sure.
We're both just stating our opinions here... it would be neat to have
the answers. (Anybody have some more facts on this one?)

--Roger