At 4:21 PM -0400 6/6/01, Thomas Charron wrote:
>... Most libraries are released under the LGPL, and *NOT* the GPL. Prime difference
>is that it specifically allows applications to make external function calls to the
>library without the GPL indecting the applications.
This is a topic near and dear to my heart.
The difference between GPL and LGPL needs significant more promotion than it gets.
I frequently come across an interesting, useful, library, and it turns out to have
been GPL'd instead of LGPL'd. That's OK. People can license it anyway they want. But
I'm not sure that GPL is truly what is intended.
A specific example:
I've recently been looking at Unit Testing Frameworks available through some of the
Extreme Programming sites. There's a very nice C++ implementation that is available
LGPL. This means I can use it in open source projects as well as promote it to my
clients who insist on selling their products for millions of dollars. :}
A resourceful, helpful, programmer ported the framework over to Windows and Visual C++
and added one or two improvements. Even wrote a note on the site that they hoped the
changes would be back-ported to the original code. However, this helpful soul then
released the code GPL.
This means two things.
1) I cannot use this code in any commercial project.
2) The modifications can never be back-ported to the original project because then the
'viral' effects kick in.
Now I don't think this was the programmer's intent -- otherwise they would not have
made the comment about back porting to the original source.
Understanding the difference between GPL and LGPL (and other open source licenses) is
critical.
Ray
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond Cote, President Appropriate Solutions, Inc.
www.AppropriateSolutions.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
603.924.6079(v) POB 458, Peterborough, NH 03458 603.924.8668(f)
**********************************************************
To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text in the
*body* (*not* the subject line) of the letter:
unsubscribe gnhlug
**********************************************************
