[Greasemonkey] GPL compatibility

Saravana Kumar saravanannkl at gmail.com
Fri Jun 3 13:30:45 EDT 2005


On 6/3/05, Mark Pilgrim <pilgrim at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/3/05, Aaron Boodman <zboogs at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/28/05, Mark Pilgrim <pilgrim at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 5/28/05, Aaron Boodman <zboogs at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > GPL is fine by me. Actually, I'd prefer something more like the
> > > > Academic Free License because it doesn't restrict mods to being as
> > > > open as the original.
> > >
> > > Well that wouldn't really be a step in the right direction, since the
> > > Academic Free License isn't GPL-compatible either.
> >
> > Mark, can you please explain what you mean by that? Or point me at a
> > good compare-and-contrast OS licenses page?
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html
> 
> GPL compatibility matters because people can create their own
> standalone extensions using the Greasemonkey compiler, which includes
> code from Greasemonkey itself in the resulting .XPI file.  So the
> license of Greasemonkey itself determines how developers can license
> their compiled extensions:
> 
> 1. Licensing Greasemonkey under the GPL would force developers to
> license their compiled extensions under the GPL.
> 2. Licensing Greasemonkey under a GPL-compatible license such as
> BSD-new or MIT would allow (but not require) developers to license
> their compiled extensions under the GPL.
> 3. Licensing Greasemonkey under a non-GPL-compatible license such as
> MPL or AFL would preclude developers from licensing their compiled
> extensions under the GPL.
> 
> #3 is the current state.  I'm pushing for #1, but would settle for #2.
> 
> --
> Cheers,
> -Mark

If Greasemonkey is released under GPL, is it mandatory to release my
user scripts under GPL ?

Saravanan


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