On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, MJ Ray wrote: > I can appreciate that, but can you please appreciate that your > software licence is far from ideal?
I do acknowledge that. This is why, in an ideal world, I would have prefered to have a license without usage restrictions (because such a license would obviously be less restrictive). > > I have received a number of > > rather unkind e-mail from some members of the open-source community. > > Please name them. Please do not take offense. I am not criticizing the members of this forum. > > As a result, the terms of the JasPer license cannot be dictated by me > > alone. > > If you are a copyright holder, you seem to have a strong negotiating > position. You can stop JasPer being distributed at all if you get > undesirable terms, can't you? Perhaps, I could have refused to allow part of the JasPer code from being released to the public. This, however, would have been to the detriment of all, however. I mean, it is better to have something available than nothing. Many people are using JasPer, in spite of its non-ideal license. If I had prevented JasPer from being publically available at all, what would this have really accomplished? After all of the time that I spent on JasPer, I would like people to be able to benefit from it. This is only possible if the software is available to the public. > Is there case history of this? I mean, I might be held liable for some > terrorist attack on London, but it seems unlikely. Few others feel it > necessary to go as far as you have with a patent self-defence clause, > so it would be interesting to learn more about the reasoning. I am not a lawyer. So I am not going to pretend to be one. Image Power and the University of British Columbia have lawyers who were consulted during in the license drafting process. I trust that these experienced individuals knew what they were doing. Sincerely, Michael --- Michael Adams, Assistant Professor Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Engineering, University of Victoria P.O. Box 3055 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 3P6, CANADA Tel: +1 250 721 6025, Fax: +1 250 721 6052, Office: EOW 403 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED], Web: www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams
