On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Patrik Stridvall wrote: > I'm against the fact that the GPL or to a smaller extent LGPL > tries use the doctrine of derived work as a weapon to achieve > their goals. It is a very dangerous weapon, since if the courts > or the policitians decide that a strong doctrine of derived work > is good it might be disasterous for society as a whole.
This is a very good point which in fact _promotes_ the LGPL. Let me explain. There are two possibilities for copyright law: 1. The copyright law becomes stronger. 2. The copyright law becomes weaker. I will assume, for the purpose of this discussion, that: A. Wine contributors wish for 2. I, for one, am very worried about the direction of law these days (see: software patents, DCMA, SSSCA, etc.) and I fully agree with Gerard that it's an unfortunate situation B. There doesn't seem to be any negative feedback loop that will prevent 2 from happening. That is, it is very probable that 2 _will_ happen sooner rather than later. Now, let's just go through the possibilities: Let's look at copyright law. If our dreams come true and 2. will become reality, then Wine will be in no worse situation than it is now in. The LGPL will effectively become BSD, i./ii. become irrelevant, and we're all happy. This scenario is possible, but (unfortunately) not probable. On the other hand, if society moves towards 1., then the LGPL is the perfect tool because it turns the stronger copyright law against itself. In this case, it is the only moral/ethical thing to do: to turn an evil instrument against itself, thus provides the _negative_feedback_loop_ that is missing at the moment. Moreover, if you are worried about the fact that open source software is so influential that it can influence the debate over the doctrine of derived work, then even more so should we opt for the LGPL because in that case we would contribute to a negative feedback that will deter politicians from making the copyright law arbitrarily stronger. -- Dimi.
