[Coco] Re: CoCo emulator for Pocket PC

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 13:06 -0700, tim lindner wrote:
> John Hogerhuis <jhoger at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > So maybe new ground still to be broken on the coco emulator front
> > after all: better licensing.
> 
> MESS' license is fairly free. You can fork (as long as you distribute
> the source), but can't commercially benefit from the source.
> 
> At least that is how I read the license.
> 

Well, wouldn't that cause a problem with using MESS as a emulation
subsystem for, say, a Coco 4? Considering that the eventual goal would
be to sell units.

I guess all the original authors hold the copyright, so each could be
approached individually to get a commercial license. But that's always
difficult on open source projects since there are often many
contributors. What to do about patches that come in from users, for
example?

I think a GPL license would get the same effect of preventing commercial
users from ripping off the project. At least with the GPL, if they make
enhancements and redistribute them, they have to make the source
available as well, in effect "giving back," which is what you hope for
when you distribute source code.

Perhaps the coco hardware sections could be dual-licensed? Then only the
non-free portions would require negotiations with the original copyright
holders, or require re-writing.

-- John.