[Opensim-dev] Clarification on Licencing and Moving Forward as a Community

[Ai Austin]

There has been a number of blog posts and descriptions recently of 
developments of OpenSim that seek to extend and solidify some of the 
results of the core developments.  This is great.  Diversity and 
rapid cycles of innovation is what a vibrant development community 
needs.  But we need to encourage some of the very best results of 
these efforts do find their way back to core and shared developments 
that benefit all.

Reading the blog entries of these developments, it seems that a big 
issue is our lack of clarity of the policy on excluding those who 
have also been involved in developments of the viewers under the 
previously restrictive licence terms, and a clear mechanism for 
extending OpenSim beyond core modules t0 those things essential to 
make a useful environment.

A few examples include:
      http://sanctuary.psmxy.org/2010/10/31/18/introducing-aurora/
      http://github.com/openmetaversefoundation/fortis-opensim
      http://www.meta7.com/

The recent move of the Linden labs viewer licence to Lesser GPL is 
critical and completely removes the need to be restrictive on that 
score.  For over 20 years all developments in my group have been 
Lesser GPL to encourage really widespread and unrestricted take up of 
the results.

Can I suggest that

a) The Dev group now discuss this and immediately declare that the 
previous restriction on excluding developers who have seen LL viewer 
source code is removed due to the LGPL licence now in effect.

b) That we adopt an approach that encourages inputs of elements and 
usability extensions (via optional modules) that are under LGPL or a 
suitable Creative Commons Licence.