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Comment by npsimons | Hacker News Reader

IANAL, but the spirit seems to be "hey, here's this software, use it how you like, but if you distribute it (including building on it or bundling it in a product) please be kind enough to extend the same freedoms to those you give it to."

Using Concord on your site? Offer a link to the source. Modify it to work better with a framework? Offer that modification too. Build an entire product off of it? Well, be prepared to release the source to that product under GPL as well. If you don't like those terms, feel free to start from scratch and not freeload off the original authors who were kind enough to share source with you in the first place.

I don't understand how people can pay good money for things like game engines, then turn around and think that OSS doesn't have a price too, or get upset when they are asked to pay it. You just end up paying back to the community instead of into a company's coffers.

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Not all OSS has a price. All of the code I've releases is under a free license, not a restrictive one like the GPL. This does mean that companies can use my code in their proprietary projects, but that seems to have gotten me more contributions back instead of less.

I also think that a license which is too complicated for anyone to actually understand is simply too flawed to serve it's purpose, which was the original point of my post. This is completely separate from people not giving back to open source.

That's what the LGPL is for, if you prefer that one (I don't; I prefer the MPL to the LGPL, as it's share-alike restrictions trigger on internal changes).

The GPL is less suitable for this because means that all of your code for the page(s) using Concord have to be GPL-compatible. Presumably, this includes Urchin.

And most important, no gratuitous incompatibility or user lock-in based on formats. Commercial developers esp ones that raise huge money, tend to try to lock users in. If that's their plan, they can write their own outliner, should that situation ever arise.

Use of the GPL doesn't merely prevent commercial developers from creating non-compatible formats -- it prevents them from using Concord at all. Let's say I want to build a commercial app that happens to use Concord, and I'm happy to use Concord as is (contributing back any patches or improvements I make) and even make the outlines exportable (assume outlining is just one feature in a much larger app, not the main focus). In that case, I'd have to make much or possibly all of the client-side code GPL compatible, so I can't use Concord, even though I'm not violating your rule about compatibility and am contributing back to the Concord community.

GPL seems like overkill given your goal. It will be limited to a niche of either fully open source public applications or completely private/internal applications.

If you modify Concord to use on your site (ie: to provide a service) then you do not need to distribute the modification.

However, if you incorporate Concord into a product you sell, then you either need to provide the source per the provisions of the GPL, or else negotiate a different license from Winer.

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