Hi Stephanie, Stephanie Bjoerk wrote on Wed, Dec 13, 2017 at 02:15:31AM +0700:
> My TMAC relies on Groff (mostly the features, but it also works on > Heirloom), which is licensed under GPL. Will it wreak havoc if I > license the TMAC under 4-clause BSD? In choosing a license, the best way to avoid unnecessary license incompatibility problems is to choose a license that both matches your intentions and is as widespread as possible. There is no value in microoptimization of licenses; having many different ones around is not helpful and may cause non-obvious inconvenience later. Nobody uses 4-clause BSD nowadays. It is a purely historical license that was abandoned even by those who did use it a very long time ago. Putting new code under 4-clause BSD today makes no sense whatsoever, even if it would not cause immediate unsurmountable problems. If you want Copyleft, use GPLv2. If you want Copyleft plus nasty added Patent Law traps, use GPLv3. If you want BSD-style (= unconditionally free) licensing, use a modern version of the BSD license, preferably the ISC license because it has a very simple and clear wording. Example wordings: https://opensource.org/licenses/ISC https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/share/misc/license.template?rev=HEAD There is no value in looking further than that. You would just make matters more complicated than they need to be. Yours, Ingo
