[wplug-board] FW: Licensing policy

[Vance Kochenderfer]

On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 03:08:13PM -0400, Terence J. Golightly wrote:
> This is my considered response to the above named person.  He/Shee is
> promoting Skybot software.  Below you will see our corresponce and my
> replies.  I just want feedback regarding my tone and if from the limited
> reading of the skybot license is not GPL/FOSS and of course if my
> premise is correct that GPLs and FOSS are one and the same.

First, there is much more to Free and Open Source Software than
the GPL.  FreeBSD, Apache, Mozilla, and many other licenses have
been given the thumbs up by both the FSF and OSI.
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html>
<http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical>

Second, we have not had a ban on presentations about non-Free
Software.  For example, our April meeting featured non-Free
Software (POW Solutions) and we had a presentation on VMware a few
years back.  There are probably more I'm forgetting.

Given these, in my view if the subject of a presentation is not
Free Software, it should have a direct connection to Linux or
other Free Software.

Looking at Skybot, it runs on Linux and uses the Tomcat web server
and PostgreSQL database, all of which are Free Software.
<http://www.skybotsoftware.com/automated-operations-products/skybot-scheduler/specs>
I did not get the attachment you mentioned, so I don't know
whether there are portions of Skybot that are non-Free.

At this moment, I would like to see the license terms for the rest
of Skybot and hear a little more about their participation in the
abovementioned Free Software projects before giving my opinion one
way or the other.

Vance Kochenderfer        |  "Get me out of these ropes and into a
vkochend at nyx.net          |   good belt of Scotch"    -Nick Danger