Licenses

About Licensing policy

The licensing policy for executables must be thought out to get registered in Sourceforge. There is a proposed Consumerium Software License, which is basically the Apache 1.1 license with apache changed to consumerium.

• 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 are under GPL (more licensing schemes, such as LGPL, are considered)

• 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 for this data exchange.

• Sourceforge allows the possibility to submit your own "open source compliant" license, so if we take the Apache license, replace "Apache Software Foundation" with whatever Consumerium-entity we can come up with that holds the copyright. Unfortunatelly I still haven't gotten around to registering an association so it's a bit of a problem. Having our own license cover both XML and executables would help so that we don't have to have two (or more) separate projects, which would be a hassle. The R&D material is under GFDL so we still would able to have that positive association with all things GNU. And about the content licenses: I've been thinking that it would be quite practical to GFDL everything where it's reasonable. Having a single Consumerium Software License would give us the control we need over the development process and the fact that all our brainwork is GFDL'd would inhibit people from declaring that we are "control freaks", since they are free to fork away. And the license could be expalained to people by showing them the diff with the Apache license.

• Further on the XSL-stylesheets that provide data-interchangeabililty between ConsuML and popular e-commerce, market data and such grammars (see:XML) could be released under GPL and LGPL, so that no-one has to rewrite them to connect these different systems together

• 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").

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External links:

• Gnu.org's list of Free Software Licenses