Ian Hickson wrote: >The LGPL would also prevent anyone from building Mozilla using MSVC++, >since the MSVC++ redistributables license disallows reverse engineering, >and the LGPL requires that that be allowed. > There're tons of (L)GPLed projects using MSVC++.
>The only case where I can see a problem is where a specific LGPL library >wishes to use Mozilla's code directly (i.e., not linking to it). Is there >really such a case? > I think so. That's the diea of open-source - to have a large pool of software you can use to build new projects. Let's say, I want to use the TXT->HTML converter in an LGPL project. I may have to change the string classes, but most of the code could be reused. I would not even be allowed to reuse a few lines, if it is under the MPL or the GPL only (ignoring that I happened to write it myself). >>Note that this problem is (again!) a problem inherent with the LGPL >>and not limited to the dual license. If you want to use LGPL-"native" >>code in GPL projects, you have the same problem. It is unclear, how it >>works, if I don't directly incorporate/import the code into the GPL >>project, but just use it (e.g. linking, extracting mozilla tarballs >>etc.). >> >The GPL is pretty clear about it. Do you have any specific examples of >where you think it is unclear? > Yes. Galeon, a GPL project, uses Mozilla libraries. In order to build Galeon with Mozilla, would it have to change all Mozilla code or could it be used unchanged? I.e. when exactly do I have to alter the license notice? * Whenever I compile code that will eventually be linked anyhow to GPL code? * When I use an (unchanged) source file in a GPL project? * When I change the source for use in my GPL project? >I should also point out that my >overall opinion on this issue is that we should be pure GPL > My personal opinion is that the GPL was poorly designed, because I think that this very discussion should never have to happen. The GPL is, IMO, not as free as other licenses.
