On Sat, Mar 7, 2015 at 6:07 AM, Stephan Eggermont <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 06/03/15 16:16, stepharo wrote:
>
>> Hi guys
>>
>> if some of you are interested to drive porting VOSS to Pharo, let me know
>> John sent me the code and I can give it to you.
>> There is a dual license
>>      - LGPL
>>      - commercial
>>
>
> What does LGPL mean for VOSS? At FOSDEM I talked with Bradley Kuhn of the
> FSF. It is something that has been on their to do list for a while
> now. In the 'strict' interpretation it is as viral as GPL for smalltalk
> code.
>
> Stephan
>



Actually just reading LGPL3 [1] , this seems less onerous for us than I
remember. I think there are two concerns:


1. That distributing an Application with Pharo and VOSS together would
somehow taint Pharo with the LGPL, but consider that if you simply load
VOSS into Pharo, without any Application making use of VOSS then
distributing that Image would seem to fall under Section 5 "Combined
libraries", and be specifically excluded from the LGPL.


2. That the Application would be tainted by the LGPL.  In our case where we
don't have a shared library mechanism, Section 4.d.0 would seem to apply.

So with your Application you would need to provide a mechanism you upgrade
the VOSS library, plus instructions to do so per Section 4.e.  This might
be achieved by:
 a. Leaving the compiler in the distributed Image such that new versions of
VOSS can be loaded via standard mechanisms - maybe just from the command
line.
 b. Loading VOSS via Fuel over the top of the existing version in image.


[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html

cheers -ben

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