In article <1014312459.984378.27488.nullmailer / ev.netlab.jp>,
Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz / ruby-lang.org> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>In message "Re: Epic4/Ruby"
>    on 02/02/22, Jonas Bow <jonas / rfc1918.com> writes:
>
>|The problems with the Ruby license in commercial/OEM situations are that
>|it is vague and a bit fuzzy because of all the alternatives in it. 
>
>Although I know fuzziness of the license, these three statements below
>are misleading at most.  I hope you're not trying FUD against GPL.
>
>|The word "GPL" is considered to be a poison
>|regardless what is mentioned otherwise in the license.
>
>|As long as Ruby has any kind of relationship with the GPL it will have a
>|hard time to be part of commercial software, IMHO. 
>
>|It seems that the only license working in commercial situations is the
>|BSD-license.
>
>And I feel if you want to make money from MY works, it is reasonable
>to take time to read the terms carefully.
>
>							matz.

First off, I have to say that I'm very supportive of the GPL.

That said, I'm wondering now about embedding Ruby into a commercial 
application - not that I'm planning to do this, let me explain a potential 
situation:

A lot of EDA (Electronic Design Automation) applications like logic 
simulators  embed a scripting language to let the user script certain 
actions.  Most often (probably 100% of the time) the embedded language 
used is TCL.  It would be great if Ruby could play in this space and since 
Ruby is easy to embed and arguably a better language (OK, that's a 
subjective statement, but I have had some experience with TCL :) it could 
potentially be a player.

So, the question is: Would Ruby's current license (a modified GPL) allow 
it to be embedded in a commercial application without, to quote those who 
are against GPL <paranoia voice>"spreading the GPL 'virus' to the rest of 
the code"?</paranoia voice> I suspect it would be possible: If the Ruby 
portion was a seperate dll or shared library I think there should be no 
worries about the rest of the commercial code becoming 'GPL'.  

Any other opinions about this?

Phil