cl-cairo2 was one of the first Common Lisp libraries I wrote, but I haven't been using it much for the last year or so (currently I am experimenting with cl-pdf as a backend for my new plotting library, which will be released soon). I have been pretty busy with research, so I didn't have time to merge (and test) patches, also, I didn't even contemplate updating the library to make use of the latest version of cairo. So when Ryan Pavlik contacted me about adding compatibility with cl-freetype2, I asked him whether he wants to take over as a maintaner. He kindly agreed, so I have transferred the repository to him, and he already merged a lot of patches.
One last thing that I wanted to fix before handing the repository over is the license. Originally, the library was licensed under the GPL — in retrospect, I think that
- I was very naive about software licenses, and didn't really understand what GPL means in the context if Common Lisp (I still don't claim that I do :-P), and
- I didn't realize that there are a lot of commercial applications in the Common Lisp world, whose authors are wary of depending on GPL'ed libraries.
Consequently, I received many complaints about the license of the library, and decided to change it. I picked the Boost Software License, and contacted all who contributed to the library for permission. All contributors approved the change, so now the library has a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license. However, it is always possible that I missed someone, so if you contributed to cl-cairo2 in the past but didn't hear from me regarding the license change, please get in touch (eg via the Github issue tracker).
I would like to thank (in alphabetical order) Ala'a Mohammad Alawi, Jay Bromley, Pau Fernández, Johann Korndoerfer, Peter Mikula, and especially Kei Suzuki (who did the last major reorganization) for their contributions to the library (again, I apologize if I missed anyone). I would also like to thank Ryan for taking over — I am convinced that the library is in good hands.
Consequently, I received many complaints about the license of the library, and decided to change it. I picked the Boost Software License...
ReplyDeleteThe Boost license permits the creation of derivative works for commercial or non-commercial use with no legal requirement to release your source code.
This is very sad. The whole point of the GPL is that you can't suddenly decide to close the source, which is exactly what those complainers must be wanting to do. A loss for the programming community.
dr: The library saw more activity since the license change (ie about a week ago) than in the year (!) preceding it. I think it is better to have an actively maintained library with a BSD-style license instead of a GPL'd library slowly succumbing to bit rot.
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