On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 11:28 AM, Randy Barlow
<bowlofeggs(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
The slight contradiction I referenced is the "if you can't
meet the
GPL" bit. The first paragraph specifically cites making money by
redistributing, but the second paragraph sounds like they think it's OK
if you follow the GPL terms. It's confusing. I think Remi is right to
say that we need to get clarification before we can add this package to
Fedora.
It is a bit confusing, and I'm wondering if this is what would be
considered a "field of use" limitation - something similar to the
(bad) JSON license, which contains an unparseable "the Software must
be used for good, not evil" condition [1].
The GPL obviously allows you to redistribute and make money from that
redistribution, but it does impose terms upon your derived works that
you may be unable to comply with if your application that uses the
library is proprietary - in that case, it seems the author is saying
"let's talk, we can come to some arrangement on a license acceptable
to you", MongoDB does similar things (licensed as AGPL, with
commercial licensing available in the highly likely event for an
enterprise that you don't want to distribute the code to your web
application that uses it).
Either way, it seems VERY poorly worded.
[1]
http://www.json.org/license.html