[logback-dev] License (again)

[Ceki Gulcu]

Hello Ralph,

The copyleft clauses of the LGPL mandate that classes derived from
Appender need to be distributed under the LGPL. However, I don't see
why your employer needs to distribute the source code for the
appenders it developed within their product. It could be distributed
in a multitude of other ways. You could create an open source project
on source forge, you could contribute the new appenders to the logback
project, heck, you could create a single web-page on a server. I am
sure that at this time and age, one can find an economical way to
distribute software.

While the liberal ethos of weak licenses have their appeal, the
copyleft has merits of its own. I mean it doesn't need to be always
take take take.

Ralph Goers wrote:
> It occurred to me that any custom Appenders written for Logback must be 
> licensed under the LGPL since they have to extend Logback base classes. 
> Is it possible to change the license for Appender, AppenderBase and 
> UnsynchronizedAppenderBase to something more liberal?  I know my 
> employer wouldn't be too thrilled to have to distribute the source for 
> Appenders along with their product.

-- 
Ceki Gülcü
Logback: The reliable, generic, fast and flexible logging framework for Java.
http://logback.qos.ch