Re: GPL v LGPL for libraries
On Tue, Dec 15, 1998 at 06:54:01PM -0800, Joseph Carter wrote:
> Forced? If you don't want to base code on a library, don't. If you do,
> you should be willing to accept the author's terms.
IMHO basing your code on a library is different than linking with it.
I don't want to copy bits of the code from the library source in to my
commercial program; the LGPL won't let me do that any more than the GPL
would. I would like to link my binary to the library's binary though, which
the LGPL allows.
Let's say a commercial application runs on proprietary Unix platform Y,
and uses library Z, supplied with Y. On a system like Debian, if our equivalent
to Z is LGPLed, then the commercial app will be fine. If Z' is GPL,
then the commercial app can't be ported to Linux. A lot of big companies
are not about to make their app GPL, so the end result is that the Linux
users loses out.
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3TYD hamish@debian.org, hamish@rising.com.au
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