On 5 Mar 2013, at 01:24, "Lundberg, Johannes" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Currently we are extending NSWIndow, NSView, etc for our "AppKit". Since > GNUstep is GPL we have to consider which parts we can implement into GNUstep > and keep open and which parts we keep proprietary. Of course, we want to > contribute as much as we can to GNUstep. Just one small clarification: GNUstep is LGPL (I am not a lawyer, none of this is legal advice). This means that you must: - provide your customers with the sources for any changes that you make to the GNUstep libraries (obviously, we'd rather you pushed them upstream, but that's not a requirement) - Allow your customers to relink their binaries against a modified version of GNUstep. This is almost always done by using shared libraries[1]. You are not, however, required to publish the code for anything that merely links against GNUstep, or uses the GNUstep headers. Specifically, inline functions and macros from GNUstep headers do not 'taint' your binary. More pragmatically, from my experience on the FreeBSD Core Team[2], we have seen several companies learn that maintaining a proprietary fork of an open source project is often much more expensive than any loss of competitive advantage from releasing their changes. David [1] Note: There are several cases of big companies apparently violating this requirement of the LGPL. One of the most prominent is Apple with WebKit on iOS, where they do not allow iDevice owners to relink mobile Safari against a custom WebKit. To my knowledge, this has never been tested in court in any jurisdiction. [2] Totally off-topic, but you didn't say what kernel / userland you were planning on putting under GNUstep. We have a very nice one, and it is the one where Clang and libobjc2 receive the most testing... -- Sent from my IBM 1620 _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
