Developer:License

Switch ZNC from GPL 2 to another license

See https://github.com/znc/znc/issues/218

What we want?

• Ability to use stuff licensed under Apache license in ZNC
  • Bootstrap
  • log4cxx
• Ability to use stuff licensed under GPL 2 license in ZNC
  • Iris or qwebirc
    • But iris is loaded as separate process, and ZNC communicates with it via socket, so it's not an issue, according to this and this
• Anything else?

The list

GPL 3

Pros:

Cons:

• Incompatible with GPLv2 and thus conflicts with "What we want": [1]

LGPL 3

Pros:

Cons:

• ZNC is not a library (Don't need to be a library to use the "Lesser" GPL license. Jreese (talk) 17:19, 20 December 2012 (UTC))

Apache 2.0

Pros:

• Most liberal license that still protects any project trademarks.

Cons:

BSD (2-clause or 3-clause?)

Pros:

• Extremely liberal license.
• 3-clause license restricts usage of

Cons:

MIT

Pros:

• Extremely liberal license.

Cons:

• Basically identical to 2-clause BSD license.

Anything else?

Comparison of Free and Open Source Licenses - Wikipedia

Licenses By Category - Open Source Initiative

Useful links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses
• http://www.tldrlegal.com/browse
• http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/floss-license-slide.html