[ros-users] [Orocos-users] [release] orocos_tools 0.1.0 and orocos_controllers 0.1.0

[Herman Bruyninckx]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2010, Josh Faust wrote:

>
> Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I am not a lawyer, but I see _copies_ of
> TaskContext creations from Orocos examples, with only some concrete
> function names being replaced by the ones he need, so my personal reflex
> would be to give credit to the project where I got this code from, also in
> the license attached to the code.
>
> Herman
>
> That's quite a grey area, given that examples are generally meant to be
> copied (and any TaskContext-derived class might end up looking like one
> of them).  If you're going to take that stance, you might as well make
> Orocos GPL.
>
> Josh

There is absolutely no difference between LGPL and GPL in the context in
which I have made my remark: the concept of "derivative code" is exactly
the same for both :-) (Both licenses just differ in what they allow you to
do with derived work.)

Anyway, I am not making any legal stance at all, except that I am trying to
make people _aware_ of the existence of such grey zones. There is no final
answer to that 'grey zone' issue, because all legislative systems (as far
as I am aware) will leave it to a judge to decide about such cases. Since I
am very anxious to keep Orocos (and also ROS) industry-ready, we (Orocos,
ROS) should try to avoid any grey zones, whenever possible, even if it is a
grey zone between two free software licenses: I would not be surprised _at
all_ to see a malafide lawyer attack ROS and Orocos for mutual license
violations if that would be a appropriate strategy for a ROS/Orocos
enemy...

My suggestion would be to dual license this kind of "ROS-Orocos" bridge
code, with LGPL and BSD the obvious license choices.

Herman