Re: Beagle license change proposal from MIT/X11 to GPLv3

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

> 	Recently we came to know that some distributions have difficulty with the 
> current Beagle license. Specifically, Debian does not recognise 
> Creative-Common Attribution 2.0 (CC-by-2.0) as a valid free software license 
> [1]. However Beagle requires Semweb which is dual licensed under CC-by-2.0 
> and GPLv2-and-later. We used to include Semweb by accepting the CC-by-2.0 
> license. GPLv2 is incompatible with the Apache license (required by 
> Lucene.Net).
> 
> 	We have always released Beagle under MIT/X11 and would love to continue doing 
> so. However I feel it is more important to make it possible for distributions 
> to package Beagle. I fully respect Debian's concerns and I would like to 
> propose that we include Semweb under GPLv3 and release Beagle under the same 
> GPLv3 license. GPLv3 is thankfully compatible with Apache license.

This sounds like a bogus claim.   For one, if MIT X11 was a problem for
code, you have larger problems in your hands, Mono's own class libraries
are MIT X11.

There is no need to change Beagle's license from MIT X11 to the GPLv3
for them to package/bundle it as it has already been pointed out in this
discussion.

Additionally, I dislike the idea of moving away from the MIT X11 as it
would prevent us from using any of that code in other places, like for
example the Mono class libraries.   We have just gone in the opposite
direction precisely because the GPL is incompatible with too many uses
that we wanted for Mono's C# compiler and dual licensed it as GPL and
MIT X11.

Alternatively, it might be easier to get the folks that develop SebWeb
to add another dual license to their package.

Miguel