Fw: Licensing Agreements Question

Hello,

I wanted to share this email. Either I have been mislead by my research of
FORTH or the Free Software Foundation does not know the origin of FORTH.

Would someone please make a comment on the part that addresses Swiftforth?

Thanks,
Jodell

----- Original Message -----
From: "Free Software Foundation" <licensing_at_gnu.org>
To: <dolfina_at_dolfina.org>
Cc: <licensing_at_gnu.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 11:09 AM
Subject: Re: Licensing Agreements Question

>
> Hello.
> Please forgive our delay, but we both gnu_at_gnu.org and licensing_at_gnu.org
> are under high pressure.
>
> > In a previous conversation, I had expressed concerns about using GPL
> > for developing online courses for our Non-profit religious organization.
> > At that time, our Board of Advisors had not chosen a language for
> > software to be distributed. After careful analysis, we were advised by a
> > programmer in another non-profit organization to research FORTH due the
> > fact that we have planned to design from the perspective of a booting
> > kernel. FORTH as a language fit our specifications.
>
> Ok.
>
> > However, after comparing the various FORTH distributions, we chose
> > SwifthForth to start our projects so that our we could bring our project
> > into the internet and know that our software would be easy to use for
> > the majority of non-programmers in our membership.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't know that product.
>
> > Although, we did consider Gforth, we discovered that Gforth was
> > written in C and we wanted a pure FORTH from the beginning.
>
> Most language interpreters and compilers are written in C. This
> includes C, and I'm pretty sure it includes SwifthForth as well. You
> just don't know that because you are only given the binary of the
> interpreter. The fact that you get the source of Gforth doesn't change
> anything on the technical level. Once you run the binary you can
> ignore that its source is written in C.
>
> > In conversations with Elizabeth Rather of Forth Inc. on the
> > comp.lang.forth we are allowed to use Swiftforth and use a GPL or
> > Open Source License if we do not include the Swifthforth kernel and
> > compiler as part of the software package offering. That is to say,
> > we are welcome to release free software source code we develop with
> > Swifthforth.
>
> Yes, that's pretty common, it's what happens every time someone
> distributes Free Software that runs in non-free environments (like
> ports of GNU software to Windows, or to non-free Unixen).
>
> > Our Board of Advisors would like to write a license agreement that
> > would be GPL and Proprietary compliant when we are using code sources in
> > respect to license agreements which we have made, such as with
> > Swiftforth.
>
> I'm sorry, I don't understand. Do you mean that you want to be
> GPL-compatible while being able to link with specific non-free code
> (i.e., code part of SwiftForth)?
>
> If I got it right, I'd suggest one of those. Either you use the GNU GPL
> plain as simple, provided all the proprietary code you are interested in
> can be qualified as operating environment for your software. This is
> allowed by the standard GPL. As I already stated, it's why GPL code
> can run under non-free OS's.
>
> From the GPL:
>
> However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not
> include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or
> binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on)
> of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that
> component itself accompanies the executable.
>
> Otherwise, if this doesn't fit your needs, you can use the "special
> exception" clause, as described in
>
> http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl-faq.html#TOCWritingFSWithNFLibs
>
> > In reviewing Free Software Foundation's GPL Compatible
> > Licenses there had been a The Clarified Artistic License version of the
> > Artistic License which is no longer available to peruse on the FSF
> > website link. We are interested in writing a license that allows us to
> > use Swiftforth, Colorforth by Chuck Moore, and other Forth Libraries
> > that may be Public Domain or not PD.
>
> Please note that the difference is not public-domain or not, but
> whether it is compatible with a specific license or not (in this case,
> the GNU GPL).
>
> > Can we rewrite a license similar to the The Clarified Artistic
> > License that is GPL Compatible and if so, does FSF have any copies of
> > the The Clarified Artistic License that we can read and use for a
> > template?
>
> Could you please reconsider using the plain GPL or GPL-with-exception
> as suggested above? Currently I don't have a copy of the clarified
artistic
> license, but I can look for one if you really need it.
>
> Hope this helps
> /alessandro
> --
> Alessandro Rubini,
> Licensing Question Volunteer,
> Free Software Foundation

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