[wx-discuss] wxWeb Port licensing and naming

[John Wilmes]

Hi all,

I'm going to be developing a new port of wxWidgets to the web over the
summer, under Julian's guidance as part of the Google Summer of Code
program. You can see the abstract at
http://code.google.com/soc/wxwidgets/appinfo.html?csaid=7CB069F2487ACE98
Basically, this will let wxWidgets apps be recompiled as web
applications running on a web server through browsers.

Before I can begin, there are a few issues that need to be cleared up
that require community input. The first is licensing. As the abstract
states, I'm hoping to implement the port as a wrapper around the Wt
toolkit ( http://jose.med.kuleuven.ac.be/wt/Home.fcg ). Unfortunately,
this toolkit is licensed under the GPL. This is less of a problem for
web apps than it would be for traditional desktop apps, since running a
web application on a server doesn't necessarily imply distribution, and
thus it might in some cases be possible to still develop closed-source
apps using the toolkit. However, it would certainly rule out
distributing closed-source apps developed against the port to other
persons' web servers. Additionally, I am concerned that even when the
application is only run on a personal web server, if it uses a GPL
library like Wt, it still must technically be open source, and thus if
the source was leaked the developer would have no legal right to prevent
its further distribution.

Does anyone have any legal insight into this problem? Is it acceptable
to limit the possible business models of applications compiled against
the web port by using a GPL toolkit as the foundation? I've asked the Wt
devs to please consider relicensing it as LGPL, but if they are not
receptive to the idea, then we need to consider the consequences of
using the GPLed library vs. starting from scratch.

Additionally, I'm not sure what to name the port. wxWeb seems like a
natural name, but I seem to remember at some point seeing another
wxwidgets project called wxWeb that had absolutely nothing to do with
what this port aims to achieve. I can't find that original project, but
regardless, I would appreciate naming suggestions.

- John Wilmes


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