[Developers] Acre hosted app licensing - BSD only?

[Tom Morris]

2009/7/2 Stefano Mazzocchi <stefano at metaweb.com>:

> We are working on updating the terms of service right as we speak.

OK, got it.  I'm a little surprised that your lawyers think they can
enforce things retroactively, but fortunately I'm not in a position
where I have any code that I care about there.

> We've picked BSD for no other reason that we feel it strikes a balance
> between protection, simplicity and compatibility with the javascript
> library ecosystem that exists right now on the web and also didn't want
> a license that prevented people from taking code from Acre and use it in
> their own apps outside (this turns out to be especially useful would we
> decide to open source Acre or parts of it to allow others to run apps
> with their own resources instead of Metaweb's)

In my world view, BSD isn't a balanced/middle-of-the-road license, but
rather a very permissive license with AGPLv3 at the other end of the
spectrum and things like EPL and LGPL in the middle.  It's great for
commercial companies who are promoting something or things with a
strong established ecosystem of commercial contributors like Apache,
but in other circumstances it's an invitation for commercial ventures
to take without giving back.

> I hope this clarifies things, but if not, I'll be happy to answer any
> other question you have on this (as it also helps me write the FAQ
> answer later ;-)

One of the things that I'd like to see is a compare and contrast /
advantages and disadvantages for all the different libraries, tools,
hosting environments, etc that are offered for Freebase.  Should I use
Acre or MJT or freebase-python or metaweb-py or load up the quad dumps
in a SQL database and use SQL or parse the WEX or ...?  What are the
business and technological implications of each?  I'm probably going
to write up my own opinions on this in a blog post for those
contemplating developing apps which touch Freebase in some way, but it
would be interesting to hear the official Metaweb party line as well.

Tom