Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Request: Change the allowed license of plugins

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From: "Christopher K. St. John" <cks@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 14:29:54 -0800 (PST)
On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, ddutt@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

> What drawbacks do you see in changing the plugin license ? I haven't
> been able to make out what your worries are. Can you repeat them to
> me one more time ?
> 

 The main problem is that the whole "The GPL stole my patent!"
argument is complete nonsense. Is there really any open source
license that's ok with the lawyers? The suggested license change
allows for binary-only plugins, which I suspect is a much more
likely outcome than vendors who are afraid of the GPL suddenly
deciding that releasing their closely guarded proprietary 
protocols under, say, the BSD license.