Subject: Copyright of Modified Ispell Code
From: Kevin Atkinson (kevina@users.sourceforge.net)
Date: Thu Jul 05 2001 - 22:20:32 CDT
Thanks to work from the OpenOffice team, Pspell is on the verge of being
able to work correctly on Win32. For this reason I would like to take
your Ispell code and make a Pspell module out of it. This will allow
Projects such as yourself and OpenOffice to only use Pspell, which is how
it was truly intended to be used, as a Portable wrapper to multiple spell
checkers. Unfortunately it is not clear what the copyright of the modified
Ispell code is.
If it is under the GPL this will probably mean that programs like
OpenOffice or Mozilla will *not* be able to use it.
Therefore, the best thing, in my view, would be to release under the same
copyright of the original Ispell code which is BSD.
However if you are not willing to do that LGPL will also work.
Or, if that will not work than perhaps you can release it under the GPL
but with the exception that other non-GPL compatible programs may use it.
This can either mean any programs (included non-free ones) or only
programs which are considered "free software" by the FSF (see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html) or are Open Source by OSI
definition (see http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html).
So what will it be. I really hope that you are willing to release it
under a license which will allow other programs such as OpenOffice and
Mozilla to use it.
Thanks in advance.
-- Kevin Atkinson kevina at users sourceforge net http://www.ibiblio.org/kevina/
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