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Re: LGPL vs. GPL
From: |
JohnF |
Subject: |
Re: LGPL vs. GPL |
Date: |
Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:27:23 +0000 (UTC) |
User-agent: |
tin/1.8.3-20070201 ("Scotasay") (UNIX) (NetBSD/4.0 (i386)) |
Ciaran O'Riordan <ciaran@fsfe.org> wrote:
> Encouraging contributions isn't usually a motivation to switch to LGPL. The
> writers of proprietary software will generally keep the most useful
> functionality in their application code (rather than in your library) and
> will contribute as little as possible.
>
> A permissive licence (such as the LGPL) can be good if you want your
> application to define an open standard. For example, the Ogg Vorbis library
> for playing that audio format is under a very permissive licence because the
> goal is to make Ogg a widely used standard (so that free software developers
> can work with an open, patent-free standard instead of the possibly patented
> mp3 format).
>
> The LGPL can also be good if you think that your field will naturally be
> dominated by a single software package and you think you might loose a
> head-to-head competition with some proprietary rival. This is the case for
> the GNU standard C library (glibc). It makes technical sense for all
> GNU/Linux operating systems to use the same libc, and if the developers of
> proprietary software for GNU/Linux wanted to write their own libc, they
> probably could. So to ensure that they don't feel a need to do that, glibc
> was released under the LGPL.
>
> So unless you find yourself in either of those rare situations, then it's
> probably best to stay with the GPL.
>
> You've probably read this, but just in case:
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
>
> Hope that helps.
Thanks, Ciaran, for the discussion and very useful information.
It indeed helps, and pretty much coincides with (and clarifies)
my original thinking -- not much reason (for me) to use the lgpl.
I hadn't seen why-not-lgpl.html before, but have read it now.
And I've replied to the email lgpl request, informing him
that mimetex will remain gpl'ed. Thanks again,
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )
- LGPL vs. GPL, JohnF, 2008/07/20
- Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Ciaran O'Riordan, 2008/07/20
- Message not available
- Re: LGPL vs. GPL,
JohnF <=
- Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Alexander Terekhov, 2008/07/21
- softwarecombinations paper Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Ciaran O'Riordan, 2008/07/21
- Message not available
- Re: softwarecombinations paper Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Alexander Terekhov, 2008/07/21
- Re: softwarecombinations paper Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Hyman Rosen, 2008/07/21
- Re: softwarecombinations paper Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Alexander Terekhov, 2008/07/21
- Re: softwarecombinations paper Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Hyman Rosen, 2008/07/21
- Re: softwarecombinations paper Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Alexander Terekhov, 2008/07/21
- Re: softwarecombinations paper Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Hyman Rosen, 2008/07/21
- Message not available
- Re: softwarecombinations paper Re: LGPL vs. GPL, Tim Smith, 2008/07/21
- Re: LGPL vs. GPL, JohnF, 2008/07/30