Licenses
About Licensing policy
URGENT: The licensing policy for executables must be thought out to get registered in Sourceforge
- Research and development is under GFDL - some sections, e.g. glossary may have to be GFDL Invariant Sections to avoid tampering and sabotage by those who want to create a counter-Consumerium to hide truth about products.
- XML DTDs and Schemas are under GPL or LGPL (more licensing schemes are considered) - again viral so that no bad copies or self-interested forks can be created without us stopping them.
- License for the actual Server and Client software isn't decided yet but it'll probably be something on the order of w:Apache server style to stop installation of unconformant software pretending to be genuine Consumerium software. This is very important, because the Retailers will totally freak out if there is even an minor possibility that the Price information can leak outside the physical shop. So there must be a Consumerium protocol that is actually implemented fo this data exchange.
- Actual content of the system (if it gets built someday) will be using whatever license the information producer wishes though there will be guidelines on where Open content and where Proprietary licenses are preferred. Ideally the license could be factionally defined, so that all Greens or Pinks or Reds could for instance agree on how data sharing in their faction works. This would be most efficient, especially if existing institutions like poltical parties and NGOs agreed to cooperate in factions matching their own politics and assumptions. They could have their own definitions of contested terms that would be allowed for in the software, so that as little political assumption as possible was built in to it (a good reason to leave contested terms open in the design phase and not to rely on any one definition, e.g. of "done").