[Spread-users] License check

Glenn McAllister glenn at somanetworks.com
Fri Jul 25 16:00:02 EDT 2008


I'm pretty certain I already know the answer, but I figured I'd ask anyway.  I 
searched the mailing list archives and wasn't able to find anything that 
directly answered my question.

I want to start an open source project where one of the key pieces of software 
I'd be using is licensed under the GPLv2.  I (obviously) want to use spread as 
the distributed communication mechanism.  IANAL, but I'm pretty sure the Spread 
Open-Source License is not compatible with the GPLv2, specifically due to the 
advertising clause, which is similar to the original BSD license.  That license 
is specifically noted as being incompatible with the GPLv2.  I tried looking for 
a specific reference to the Spread Open-Source License at 
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html but was unable to locate one.

Interestingly enough, in the spread email archives I did find reference to 
OCamlSpread, which is an OCaml wrapper around spread.  The only release I found 
was from SourceForge back in September 2002.  The wrapper source is declared to 
be GPLv2, that it uses the Spread libraries, and includes a copy of the Spread 
License.  Was this blessed by the Spread license holders before it was released?

Am I out of luck, or have I missed something?

Thanks,
-- 
Glenn McAllister     <glenn at somanetworks.com>      +1 416 348 1594
SOMA Networks, Inc.  http://www.somanetworks.com/  +1 416 977 1414




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