-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 >>>>> "Doug" == Doug Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Doug> Here's the text of the exception from GPL-with-exception. Doug> As a special exception, if you link this library with other Doug> files to produce an executable, this library does not by itself Doug> cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Doug> Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any Doug> other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the Doug> GNU General Public License. Doug> It says if you "link" this library, you're okay. Doug> But what if you need to fix a bug in the library? Fixing a bug Doug> is "modifying", not linking. Once you do more than link, the Doug> exception doesn't help. Neither does the LGPL. Doug> Ordinary users are covered by the exception, but developers need Doug> to fix bugs. In the case of GPL-with-exception, the standard GPL Doug> takes over as soon as you take a single step past linking. Doug> And the GPL is, intentionally, not very friendly to people who Doug> do commercial software. That's why the LGPL originally came into Doug> existence. You mean "proprietary software". Doug> Here's text from the LGPL that doesn't appear in the GPL: Doug> 5. A program that contains no derivative of any portion of Doug> the Library, but is designed to work with the Library by being Doug> compiled or linked with it, is called a "work that uses the Doug> Library". Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work Doug> of the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this Doug> License. Doug> So under LGPL, software that uses the library is not a Doug> derivative work. And that is very, very important, because a Doug> derivative work doesn't belong to me. GPL, and Doug> GPL-with-exception, don't have this advantage. Under GPL, Doug> software that uses a modified version of a GPL library appears Doug> to be a derivative work, except in special Doug> circumstanes. Otherwise the extra text in LGPL wouldn't be Doug> needed. Doug> So if you fix a bug in a library that uses GPL-with-exception, Doug> it looks like you can lose ownership of your own code that calls Doug> that library. This would make Microsoft very happy. NO FREE SOFTWARE LICENSE EVER TRANSFERS OWNERSHIP. >> There's practically nothing that's permitted under the LGPL that >> isn't also permitted under GPL-with-exception. Doug> Keeping ownership of your code that calls a library when you fix Doug> bugs in the library is more than "practically nothing". Doug> I do a lot of GPL and LGPL work. But some of what I do is Doug> proprietary. When I release something as open source I want it Doug> to be a conscious decision, not just because I fixed a library Doug> bug and shipped the fix. You may disagree with this analysis, Doug> and the people who wrote the licenses may not have intended the Doug> result, but when commercial software is involved we have to be Doug> conservative. You are mistaken. Your code that uses a library and your bug fixes to the library are unique and seperate things, so while the bug fix (or rather, "the modified version of the library that encorporates the bug fix") would be subject to the license of the library, be it the GPL or the LGPL, your code that uses the library or modified version of the library can still be classified as an independent work. The GPL says this, in section 2: These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. Almost everyone who misunderstands the GPL misses this point. So you always have rights to code that you wrote yourself under the GPL, but you have additional rights under the GPL+exception with respect to a certain class of derivative work. Doug> And after all, LGPL is still an open source license. The LGPL is a free software license. - -- Casey Marshall || [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.7 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/> iD8DBQFADDoEgAuWMgRGsWsRAkbNAJ9brj0HqfRnKQbKSaYii9ypqWw2bQCgidNH 1BbKnTI+PDpzmwYgKXWqLyI= =dDXd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ kaffe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kaffe.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kaffe
