Thanks fellowtraveller
Actually there are a bunch of licensing issues that have to be resolved. Me and the SFLC/FSF are trying to fix up the AGPL since there is a bug in it where bitcoin is concerned. Also OpenSSL conflicts with the GPL and LAGPL was discussed since they get a lot of requests for it.
But still got a lot of time since the project is far from maturity.
OpenSSL doesn't necessarily conflict with the GPL! All you have to do is, provide a waiver with your license, allowing your users to link OpenSSL while using your library.See the OT headers for examples of this, regarding OpenSSL as well as the Lucre library:
https://github.com/FellowTraveler/Open-Transactions/blob/master/LICENSE-AND-CREDITS.txtWget, for example, uses this "waiver" trick, and other software. Google for more info.
YOU can provide additional permissions on top of the AGPL (which is exactly how the LAGPL itself works.)
Since you can add permissions (NEVER restrictions) to any GPL license, then you may also be able to fix your AGPL "bug" using that technique.
Thanks for the links, particularly Charles M. Hannum's comments on NetBSD licensing. It contrasts the opinions of O'Reily which have been quite influential over the decade. I had suggested a playful BSD-like license (Poetic License), but perhaps the Affero extensions and strong copyleft are necessary with respect to bitcoin, and the Lesser extension for libraries such as libbitcoin. Though isn't LGPL (in contrast to GPL) essentially BSD?
GPL licenses make exemptions for other GPL licenses, for interoperability reasons. So LGPL is different than BSD in terms of this interoperability. (For example, the above-described waiver is not necessary with LGPL...)
FYI, here is my own "easy english" description of the L-AGPL's operation:
Whether you are distributing binaries that link to the OT-API, or whether you are using the OT-API in your website — so-called “software as a service” — either way,
your own code may remain private, but any improvements to the OT library or API code itself must be made available open-source.My understanding is that the BSD license does not do this -- IBM could take all the libbitcoin code tomorrow if it were under BSD license, and use it internally, without having to open any source code, and without having to deal with the developers of libbitcoin. They could then sell it as closed-source, at a profit, and cut out the original developers, and cut out the open source community. They would not have to make available any of their improvements to libbitcoin, but could keep these proprietary. IMO that is a big distinction between BSD and LGPL.
I'm not opposed to the BSD license, but the link I provided in the previous post demonstrates why the GPL license can be important when it comes to maintaining a thriving open-source community around a given piece of software. Especially convincing is the amount of money spent by (normally competing) corporations such as Microsoft, et al towards improving linux, where such entities would normally never invest funds to benefit their competitors, but instead would tend to choose a proprietary solution (or co-opt a piece of BSD-licensed code in order to create a proprietary solution, as described in that article.)