Developing commercial software

[Lutz]

Yes, multiple licenses are possible in principle. Some open source projects follow this strategy. In the case of newLISP, additional conditions are always defined on a case by case basis.



Lutz

[_ex_]

sorry to bump!



Has somebody released a LGPL newLisp application?



I mean, got to an agreement with Lutz... right now I think I could use newLisp for a little game, the newlisp footprint and speed the reason, but I'm not sure because my other option is lua with a more freely license that permits embedding (with lees semantic *power* of course but similar footprint and speed), I don't want to spend time implementing something in newLisp if at the end the result is that my game is GPLed.



I must understand the GPL license of newlisp as a possible way to commercial licenses with the author, and that is Ok, but maybe a LGPL license for small or personal projects (even close sourced) would be handy.



Any comments about this?

[Jeff]

You could write a bash script to wget a copy of newlisp off the server and compile it as a shared library as part of the install process of your application, although you would need to notify and get the user's permission to do so.  This is how the proprietary nvidia linux kernel driver works (or, at least, used to work.)



You can then write your program using the shared library to access the interpreter.



You might also look at lua.  I believe lua is more permissive as an embedded scripting engine, and it is no less powerful than newlisp.

[jeremyc]

Has any more thought went into this? I have enjoyed toying with newLisp, but cannot consider it a language for me to use because of the licensing restrictions. If I spend time developing something, I would want the freedom to do with it as I wish, without all kinds of hoops to jump through.



Jeremy

[jeremyc]

I guess no change in the licensing, any commercial software is still prohibited by the licensing of NewLISP?



Jeremy

[newdep]

Where does it say that commercial software is prohibited ??

[TedWalther]

Where does it say that commercial software is prohibited ??

I think he means closed-source more than he means "commercial" software.

[jeremyc]

Sorry. Yes, closed source is what I mean.

[m35]

I've been thinking about this recently. Since newLISP is under the GPL, I assume Lutz only expects businesses to use it server-side, or as an internal general purpose scripting language. There's very little chance we would ever see newLISP as part of a commercial client application.



I'm not a devoted fan of any particular software license. Each one has its own pulses and minuses. In this case it seems newLISP could become more prolific if the license was more permissive. I would hope that would, in-turn, mean more people giving feedback.



I think newLISP could be a pretty good competitor for a small but fast embedded scripting language. Lua is arguably the most widely used for that task, and I would be curious to see how newLISP performance compares (a good topic for someone's blog post?).



I doubt Lutz would ever market newLISP as an embedded scripting language, which is fine. But the current license pretty much completely removes that as a possibility, along with many others.



It just seems like newLISP could really benefit from a more permissive license.

[newdep]

Im just wondering why there is such a fuzz about the license all the time..

If someone could please tell me.. Then I know whats going on because somehow i dont see the issue..



Is it because people can't compile the newlisp scripts? (its readable)



Or is it because of the newlisp binary itself?



Or is it that people dont understand how to "provide" the code to the requester?

(because you dont have to put your code on every milk bottle outthere you know ;-)



Or is this the issue?

Code Select Expand

The way newLISP is licensed, it does not permit linking or packaging closed source with newLISP together.
You would have to distribute your closed source in a separate package. Users would have to install a newLISP distribution and then your closed source package.


[HPW]

Or is this the issue?

Yes, especially user of the DLL-flavour would benefit of a LGPL-license for the DLL.

Now you have to make a seperate install and load the DLL from there.

[m35]

In response to some of the comments in the very hijacked http://www.alh.net/newlisp/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2890">Artful Code thread, I hope to clarify with some concrete examples.



With newLISP under the GPL, it is very unlikely businesses would use newLISP in client software (because it would require releasing their source code). Two specific uses-cases I have in mind are:



(1) Distributing client programs that use newLISP as an embedded scripting language



The only way to use GPL software with a closed-source program is to execute it completely separately. Apple's use of gcc with their Xcode IDE is a good example of this. Interfacing with newLISP via IPC pipes might work, but would just be a kludge because a business doesn't want to release source code.



(2) Distributing client programs written entirely in newLISP



http://www.alh.net/newlisp/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=9881#9881">According to Lutz

The way newLISP is licensed, it does not permit linking or packaging closed source with newLISP together.



You would have to distribute your closed source in a separate package. Users would have to install a newLISP distribution and then your closed source package.

That workaround might work, but is again just a kludge.





It is very possible for businesses to use newLISP for other purposes (because it doesn't require releasing source code). Here are two examples of that:



(3) Using newLISP for internal processes and programs



I'm sure many in these forums have and do use newLISP at work for batch processes, log parsing, automation, quick throw-away scripts, etc. newLISP is helping people be more efficient, which saves the business money.



(4) Server side code for web applications



There is a tremendous amount of GPL licensed software being used in web-sites today. Youtube's use of ffmpeg for video processing is one example. Businesses are making tons (tonnes?) of money off it all.



In cases 3 and 4, businesses can even change/improve the code, and never have to contribute those changes back to the community.





Lutz has put an enormous amount of time and effort into newLISP. I am incredibly grateful for that. He holds the copyright for almost all of the code, so of course he gets to decide whatever license he wants to use. I say 'almost all' because I'm lucky to have my name on a bit of code I contributed. That code is available under the very permissive zlib license.



I don't see anything inherently good or bad about license choices. You use the one that meets your intent. I've released a non-trivial program with almost 30k lines of code under GPL myself. I did it because I never want anyone to utilize its code without contributing back to the community. If businesses don't use my program because of the license, I'm ok with that.



It's all up to Lutz of course. If he says "newLISP is under GPL, it's for my own reasons, this won't change," I'd be ok with that. I just see added opportunity if a different license allowed for use-cases 1 and 2. The LGPL seems like an excellent choice, because no source code has to be released unless it has been changed--then just the newLISP code that has to be shared.

[bjoernknafla]

The GPL license prevents the use of newLISP as an embedded script- or glue-language inside projects that can't or don't want to license their code under GPL (commercial projects).



Even exploring if it is usable as an embedded language does not make sense for commercial projects - or even projects that publish their code under the BSD or MIT license.



I am not saying that this a problem for the development of newLISP - just that it limits its use case.



Cheers,

Bjoern

[itistoday]

I'd just like to cast my vote for the LGPL (or if possible, an even more liberal license).

[TedWalther]

The real question is, is Lutz willing to grant exceptions to the license (for a fee)?  Richard Stallman told me that was possible.  If you want to sell a closed application, the author of the code has the right to license his code to you under any terms he wants.  So the GPL applies in general, but it doesn't prevent dual licensing.  So the key is, what is Lutz willing to do.  If you have an application that took you a lot of effort to write, and a small number of users, it might make sense to keep that degree of control.  But if you are selling the software, it makes sense to pay the other contributors to your software, in this case, Lutz.  I assume Lutz would judge this on a case by case basis.  Lutz is for keen on freedom for everyone, so you'd need to make a good case and specify reasonable terms in the alternate license.