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Date:      Sun, 25 Jan 1998 03:12:58 +1030
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>
Cc:        Christoph Toshok <toshok@Hungry.COM>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Free netscape - good or bad ? 
Message-ID:  <199801241642.DAA00335@word.smith.net.au>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 24 Jan 1998 17:29:26 BST." <19980124172926.36408@follo.net> 

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> > I'm more than willing to beat up on netscape people who are leaning
> > towards a more restrictive license than the GPL.  If any of you have
> > contact with such people from, let me know.  I'll be on the look out
> > for them as well.
> 
> I think there are at least a few variations from the GPL that would be
> a good thing here:
> 
> (1) Anybody that distribute copies of something dervied from Netscape
> should be required to give Netscape a copy on request (for free).
> This makes sure Netscape don't have to pay or do extra work to get
> features from something derived from Netscape.

This is the CMU/Mach approach.  It seems to work pretty well.

> (2) Netscape should be allowed to distribute libraries for linking to
> 3rd parties, without the 3rd party being required to distribute source
> code (or object files for linking as in the LGPL).  This should
> include cases where people have contributed changes back to Netscape.
> (This is to allow competition with the embedded IE4).

I'm not sure I parse you here; you are suggesting that libnetscape.so 
should be subject to LGPL-style conditions?

> I want a license that allow Netscape more rights than they would have
> had with the GPL; it shouldn't place many more restrictions on 3rd
> parties, but it should allow Netscape to do a lot more than a GPL with
> back-contributed code normally does.

If the legal people get it right, that would be ideal.  Whether they're 
open to input is, of course, anyone's guess.

-- 
\\  Sometimes you're ahead,       \\  Mike Smith
\\  sometimes you're behind.      \\  mike@smith.net.au
\\  The race is long, and in the  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\  end it's only with yourself.  \\ 





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