I think you need to look at the goals of the licenses, and not focus on what is needed to comply, if your interested in why to choose one. The GPL is suggested (by GNU) if you have an open source product that is highly unique, because it will attract users and if used, will force more GPL'd software to be produced (insert snowball effect here). The LGPL is suggested (again by GNU) if you have a library that already exists in other domains (not highly unique), or you wish to allow for closed source usage. The LGPL ensures that your library cannot be used as a starting point for some really cool extension, without getting some benefit back. Basically your entitled to any changes someone makes to YOUR library. Not sure what the intent behind the BSD license was. Public domain is a gift to the world. If you don't care that someone might extend your product without giving you the changes, it it the easiest and most "consumer friendly" way of doing it.
On 5/25/05, D. Richard Hipp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 13:39 -0400, Chad Whitacre wrote: > > I am interested in the reasoning behind SQLite's dedication to the > > public domain vis-a-vis other copyright/licensing options (GPL, BSD, > > etc.) Is there any documentation available on this decision? > > GPL and LGPL are too restrictive for SQLite because applications > generally want to be able to statically link against SQLite without > inheriting the GPL license requirements. BSD retains copyright in > technicality, but doesn't really retain any real rights - so what's > the point? Public domain just seemed the easiest way to go. > > > > > Furthermore, are there any groups or websites advocating for dedications > > of software to the public domain who could provide information in > general? > > > > http://www.creativecommons.org/ > I'm sure you can find more on Google. > > > Specifically, are there other major software packages that have been > > dedicated to the public domain? > > http://freshmeat.net/browse/197/ lists 521 software projects that claim > to be "public domain", though many of them are misusing the term. But > there are still many famous packages that are PD. The first page lists > NTP and Expect in addition to SQLite. > > See also http://libtomcrypt.org/ > > -- > D. Richard Hipp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >
