Common Public License (CPL)

[Gary Cramblitt]

On Friday 03 March 2006 10:39, George Kraft wrote:
> The reason that I am writing is that I am getting some resistance
> regarding SDK's CPL license.  It is my understanding that CPL is similar
> to LGPL in that it is not "viral" like GPL.  Applications should be able
> to use a CPL header file and link to a CPL stub library and be fine.
> If KDE could add CPL to the license list, then KTTS and other
> accessibility applications could take advantage of SDK to better enable
> the desktop.
>
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-accessibility&m=113745813727551&w=2

Of interest, the GraphViz software went through a similar "discussion" in the 
debian-legal mailing list because GraphViz is released under CPL.  Here's a 
good summary of the major issues:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00847.html

The indemnity clause is the one that most disturbs me.  If you interpret the 
words in the license literally, you will have a "wtf" reaction.

Unless I'm mistaken, GraphViz is now in the stable debian repository, and no 
longer in non-free.

-- 
Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)
KDE Text-to-Speech Maintainer
http://accessibility.kde.org/developer/kttsd/index.php