Up to Main Index Up to Journal for September, 2012 JOURNAL FOR SUNDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER, 2012 ______________________________________________________________________________ SUBJECT: Still interest in WolfMUD out there DATE: Sun Sep 2 17:12:36 BST 2012 Well there is still interest for WolfMUD out there :) This week I had a nice email from Dumpledore saying he was working on a small WolfMUD project. He asked if I could give some help and advice on the Java version of WolfMUD. During the following exchange of emails I mentioned the rewrite going on. He and a few others - fellow devs and players? - seemed very enthusiastic. They may not be able to help with the coding but are very willing to be testers. I've also had a lot of feedback on new ideas and comments on the old WolfMUD. In other news the rewrite is slowly progressing and I've written more of the missing unit tests. I've also been working on this site getting it ready to go live. -- Diddymus ______________________________________________________________________________ SUBJECT: License considerations DATE: Sun Sep 2 21:32:352 BST 2012 While going through the new website material I noticed the grand plan[1] still had the following paragraph: - The new WolfMUD will be released under an Open Source license from the very start. Probably the GPL2 or GPL3 but no firm decision yet. This prompted me to take another look at licenses. Go itself - as at version go1.0.2 - is under a modified BSD 3 clause license: https://golang.org/LICENSE This is good news. However I remember there was a question a while ago on one of the mailing lists about concerns with GPL programs that statically link with Go. I think the concern was due to the patent clause in the license - which has since been split into a separate file: https://golang.org/PATENTS Looking at the GPL on the GNU website there is a list of GPL-Compatible Free Software Licenses. According to the list the modified BSD license is compatible: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ModifiedBSD If I want to distribute binaries along with source code for WolfMUD written in GO can I point to the golang.org website to comply with the GPL's provision of source code? This is because even with all my code being available and under the GPL the Go libraries are still required to recreate executable binaries. Are the Go libraries considered system files - as in Go system files maybe? The only reason for providing binaries to users is for their convenience. I tend to find - especially with the Java version - that users will download and try the binary. If it meets their criteria of useful software they usually come back for the source code later and then build their own binary. I could just as easily provide only source code - but my already small audience would get even smaller. The GPL as a license for WolfMUD seems sound. Question now is GPL2 or GPL3? -- Diddymus [1] Grand plan: ../../../grand-plan.html Up to Main Index Up to Journal for September, 2012