From: Mat Marcus (mmarcus_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-11-14 00:46:23
Please remember that in a corporate setting individuals wishing to
use boost in their product or its SDK must solve a number of
problems, not all of them technical. Reuse is often a driven by a
bottom up, grass roots effort. Engineers must solve technical
problems, educate peers and management, and address the "not invented
here" syndrome. Reuse efforts can easily be derailed; obtaining
approval from the legal department can be a major hurdle. It may seem
like large corporations would have sufficient legal resources to
examine multiple licenses. This might be true if reuse was a
corporate wide initiative. But, for bottom up efforts, legal
resources can be scarce. Besides the problem concerning the number of
licenses, some legal departments also have problems with the license
in some of the libraries that requires boost related copyright
notices to appear in 'user documentation'. As I see it the goal is to
encourage as many programmers as possible to use the boost libraries.
At least some programmers are only seeking more uniformity from the
licenses. This is not a radical change or some kind of watering down.
--Mat