1999 Swarm survey results: available online [extra bonus question!]

[Marcus G. Daniels]

I'd like to get some input about our distribution conditions for Swarm.

Currently, Swarm is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public
license (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html).  This license was
selected because it ensures that distributed changes and improvements
to the simulator itself are available to us and available to the
community.  The LGPL makes no demands on the general availability of
source code for models that are implemented using Swarm.

However, five things are causing us to reconsider this decision, i.e.
switching to the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html):

  1) Windows users of Swarm already rely on the Cygwin DLL, which is
     distributed under the GPL, not the LGPL.  Thus, Swarm models
     distributed for the Windows environment effectively fall under
     the GPL, unless you purchase a ~$7000US license from Cygnus.

  2) We are being inhibited from acheiving portability of the Java
     layer for Swarm by denying ourselves the option of relying on
     GPLed software.  As it stands, without several extra weeks of
     work, HP/UX won't run Swarm 2.0 unless we put GPLed software in
     the Swarm distribution.

  3) The Swarm survey indicates that research users dominate industry
     users by factor of thirty.  Whatever comprimises we (via the LGPL)
     make for industry users, it doesn't seem to be making a
     difference in terms of getting industry participation.

  4) We can arrange alternative licenses for groups that distribute
     (e.g. sell) models, but can't afford to distribute the source code to
     their models. 

  5) There are no requirements imposed on users of
     private, non-distributed Swarm models under the GPL.

For more info on free software licensing issues, please refer to:

   http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html