On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 12:10:56 AM UTC-5, Alex Harsanyi wrote: > > I am curious to know how you plan to comply with section 4.d of the LGPL, > which states that the users of your application must be able to replace the > LGPL "library" with a modified version of their own -- this means all the > racket packages that you use in your application (even the ones shipped > with Racket): >
Excellent question. I don’t intend to comply with the LGPL. My reasoning is as follows: We know that a couple of years ago, Racket’s caretakers took steps to try to change Racket from LGPL to MIT+Apache. We know that effort has effectively stalled out, with no definite explanation given as to why (as far as I know). So either a) Racket's caretakers have changed their minds and no longer agree that the license should be changed, OR b) Racket's caretakers have been unable to get all of the original copyright-holding contributors to sign off on the change, because of an inability to get a response or because some contributors have refused, or because the caretakers themselves haven't had time to finish the process, OR c) The whole process has been placed on hold because of external factors (such as deference to SFC standards/timing), OR d) The process is on track but we haven't been told yet. (Perhaps it’s very nearly done, perhaps it's being worked on mostly by people who don’t know we’re having this discussion, etc.) I have ruled out (a) since in that case we would expect them to say the change is off and put the matter to rest. If (b) or (c) or (d) is the case, then it remains that *most* of Racket’s key contributors still believe in, and fully intend to effect, a switch to a more permissive license. Which in turn means that an enforcement action (against a developer doing something that would be allowed under those more permissive terms) is vanishingly unlikely. The worst case would be a (b) situation where some contributors are refusing; even in that case, unless the contributors are themselves lawyers, the practical threat of an action would (I think?) be small. Perhaps naively (IANAL), I am willing to be the guinea pig who will put these assumptions to the test by violating the terms of Racket’s current license. I’ve decided to make the test more interesting by announcing my intent here. I will let you all know if I receive any lawyer letters after release day. Any such letters would flush out who the recalcitrant contributors are and help us identify which portions of Racket need to be rewritten to allow the license change to proceed. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/f243943c-32ab-4fa7-877a-679444c95fe9%40googlegroups.com.
