Free Software Licensing Quiz

mpawlo writes: "How much do you know about free software licensing? Time to find out! In a quiz presented by the Free Software Foundation you can test your abilities. How should Joan license her web browser?"

Comments

Joan should quit developing

[glenstar]

Joan wants to distribute copies of her browser statically linked to Postfix (a mail server)...

What in the hell is Joan thinking of linking a web browser to a mail server? I think Joan is automatically disqualified from ever developing software, much less having the ability to determine which license to use.

Re:Joan should quit developing

[Yarn]

Remember, this quiz is from the people who developed emacs...

Source several OOMs bigger than the binary?

[yerricde]

I'm developing a video game to be released under the GNU General Public License. The binary (executable + video and sound assets) will be about 256 KB, and the source code for the executable portion of the file plus the custom build tools is about 256 KB. The problem is that the "source code" for the whole project, as defined by the GPL, may exceed 50 MB (primarily large lossless video and sound files), and because this is my first project, I can't afford very much web space. I can't re-license the software because it uses the LZO compression library, which is licensed under the GNU GPL, not the Lesser GPL. (I can switch to any other packer library with similar speed, but I don't want to have to go all the way back to RLE compression.)

If the source code is several orders of magnitude bigger than the binary and requires manual processing in the build process, how should I distribute my software electronically in order to comply with the letter and spirit of the GNU GPL?

Re:Source several OOMs bigger than the binary?

[ttfkam]

I would suggest talking to a lawyer about it (and/or contacting the FSF), but don't forget snail mail.

You can put just what you need online and provide the complete "source" via CD in the mail if requested. Remember that you can charge for the materials necessary to mail them a copy so that it's not an undue financial burden. If your game turns out to be quite popular, check around for hosting; there are folks out there who have the bandwidth and need a reason for people to come check out their services.

If it doesn't turn out to be that popular a game or folks just don't care about the source (it happens a lot), then it's a moot point anyway. But in the event that it is popular, there are options open to you. If anything, I would think the FSF would rather shell out the server space than let a popular piece of GPL goodness get mired down in programmer exhaustion.