On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 01:56:54AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > Hmmm. I'm not sure blanket acceptance of "closed-universe" projects is > really a good idea. I'm not sure it serves our users very well, and I'm > pretty confident it doesn't serve the Free Software community very well. > > At the same time, I'm struggling to determine an essential distinction > between a single de-facto closed-universe project, and a vast collection of > such projects (which all works licensed under the GNU GPL could be said to > be).
I wonder if a different, GPL-like viral copyleft (such as a hacked GPL without a fallback clause) could even be used in Debian. The only reasons the LGPL is GPL-compatible are 1: the LGPL-to-GPL downgrade clause (LGPL#3), and 2: the "operating system" exception (GPL#3), which is irrelevant for Debian. A work under a modified GPL would lose #1, as well, so it seems that the LGPL would be incompatible with that license--which includes glibc, probably making it practically useless, even if DFSG-free. (Lacking a real package under such a license, we don't necessarily need to explore this in detail now, but I'm interested in any comments anyway, especially of any logic errors in the above.) -- Glenn Maynard
