Ian Hickson wrote:
> Why do we care about LGPL projects and not, say, projects using the
> original BSD license, the Apache license, the Zope license, the IBM public
> license, the Qt public license, the Sun Industry Standards Source License,
> etc, etc, etc?
Because nobody has ever claimed that the BSD license, etc., are
"incompatible" with the MPL.
My point is very simple: The FSF claims (for whatever reason) that the
MPL is "incompatible" with the GPL, and that therefore special
accomodations have to be made in the Mozilla licensing scheme in order
to permit people to use Mozilla code in GPLed applications without
violating the GPL terms.
OK. So then I say in turn that if the MPL is "incompatible" with the GPL
then it must be "incompatible" with the LGPL as well, and that therefore
special accomodations have to be made in the Mozilla licensing scheme in
order to permit people to use Mozilla code in LGPLed libraries.
If someone appears tomorrow and says that the MPL is incompatible with
(say) the Zope license, and that we must make special accomodations to
allow Mozilla code to be used in Zope-licensed applications, then we can
consider doing that. But no one else (other than the FSF) has ever come
to the Mozilla project and claimed that Mozilla's licensing terms were
incompatible with the terms they were using for their own code.
> For that matter, why do we want to promote _any_ non-strong-copyleft
> projects, other than Mozilla itself?
This has nothing to do with promoting a particular philosophy of
software licensing. It has everything to do with permitting Mozilla code
to be used in as many different projects as possible, regardless of what
licenses are being used for those projects' code. In pursuing this goal
I have no desire to promote any one license over any other license, and
in particular I have no desire to promote the GPL over the LGPL; I'll
leave that to the FSF.
Frank
--
Frank Hecker
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
