Re: GPL v LGPL for libraries
On Wed, Dec 16, 1998 at 06:41:56PM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> 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.
Looking at /usr/doc/libc{5,6}/copyright I see that "Some small parts" of
libc5 are distributed under the GPL. Does this mean that any company
wishing to keep their source non-GPL _cannot_ release a libc5 library (or at
least would have to statically link it using only the non-GPL parts of
libc5)?? Conversely is libc6 fine for non-GPL products.
Adrian (and yes this _is_ very important (AFAIK <g>))
email: adrian.bridgett@zetnet.co.uk, http://www.poboxes.com/adrian.bridgett
Windows NT - Unix in beta-testing. PGP key available on public key servers
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