[Savannah-hackers] submission of Z80 assembler - savannah.nongnu.org

[b . wijnen]

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Bas Wijnen <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
License: gpl
Other License: Later now under certain (I hope acceptable) conditions.
Package: Z80 assembler
System name: z80asm
Type: non-GNU

Description:
The program is an assembler for the Z80 microprocessor, found in the MSX 
computer.

The primary goal of the assembler is to correctly assemble all valid Z80 code.  
Secondary goal is to assemble undocumented instructions as well.



Once the assembler is operational, the idea is to write \\\"header files\\\" 
with label definitions for common MSX structures, such as the BIOS.  These can 
then be included in programs, so they don\\\'t need to use numeric literals.



There is already functionality to write label files, containing label names and 
their values in an includable format.  The plan is to write a framework to make 
some sort of a linker with this functionality.!



The source code is currently hosted at

http://sourceforge.net/projects/msxz80asm/



Note that the goal of the project has changed a little bit since I wrote it 
there, it is now more about an assembler for the Z80 in general, not only for 
the MSX computer.



Other Software Required:


Other Comments:
I want to move this project from sourceforge to savannah, because I do not want 
to be an advertisment for non-free software.



I have changed the license to a limited "version 2 or later", I hope you like 
it.  The changes are in the cvs at sourceforge, not in the latest release.  My 
e-mails to *.gnu.org don't seem to come through, therefore I quote what I 
e-mailed here (I already made the changes, so the question if that could be 
acceptable is obsolete):



> Licensing under the "GNU GPL v2 only" is problematic.

> Would you please agree to license under the "GNU GPL v2 or later"?



I understand your position, however I have a problem with it:

If for any reason GPL v3 or later would limit the freedoms of the end-user, 
most likely because it becomes like the BSD license, I do not want to use it 
for my program.



I trust the FSF as it is now very much, and I am sure the GPL will not be like 
this anytime soon.  But I don't know what will happen in the (far) future.  I 
think it is a bad idea to make a habit of licensing code with this clause, 
because removing it when the FSF would become less trustworthy may be 
forgotten.  And anyway, all program versions until the removal would fall under 
the new license.



These two things (not wanting to sign a blank contract, to be filled in later, 
but wanting to allow good license changes to be made without the need of 
contacting all developers) are a big dilemma for me.  I have read the GPL v2, 
and I think the good side of things (having the changes in the license for the 
code when v3 comes out) will not be large (because v2 is exactly what I want, 
so if v3 is good, it will at least be like it).  However, the potential bad 
side of things (licensing BSD style) is very large.  For that reason, I would 
like to license it as version 2 only.



I would be happy to add a clause to allow version 3 or later, on the condition 
that certain parts of the license are not changed in the newer version (or 
better, that certain rights are still (not) given).  Let me know if that would 
be acceptable, in that case I will write such a clause and send it to you for 
approval.  If there is such a clause which is suggested by the FSF, then I 
would like to hear about this, so I can see if it is acceptable for me.




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