On Fri, Apr 24, 1998 at 02:22:39PM +0100, Jules Bean wrote: > >> On the contrary. This is an excellent point you made. ncftp > >> is now under GPL!! Yay! libreadline not being under LGPL worked! > >> Hurrah! > > > > Um, 2.x is GPL. 3.x is not, afaik. > > Certainly the version of 3 in hamm is not linked against readline, which > would suggest not. > > In fact, it makes 3 in the hamm almost useless, IMHO - what is the use of > ncftp without history and completions? They're the main reason I use it... 3 was yanked from hamm (hardly usable) and 2 was put in main. I think it uses an epoch, which should make it install even though versionwise it's older. > >> I think it is about time we hardened our stance in favour of > >> the GPL. > > > > Manoj, you're crazy, you realize that? <sigh> I happened to like 3 > > better than 2 personally. <shrug> Ah well, one of my favorite programs > > is now free for the modding---someone wanna do slang version now? => > > The GPL's not that good. Here's an example from the Mac-side. Internet > Config is a free program which centralises the users internet preferences > (mail-servers, email address, .sig, etc.). Because it's free, it is used by > lots of commercial and pseudo-commercial (Netscape) apps.. and this is a > good thing. I must agree with Manoj that it has its purposes. I won't pretend to like that libreadline is not LGPL--but I am told there is another lib which is not under the GPL and is essentially a workalike. I don't have this library, nor do I know what it's called, but I'm looking for it. => > If it had been GPLed, they wouldn't be able to distribute it. Which would > be a bad thing. Unless you really believe that commercial software has > absolutely no value or place... > > Indeed, this line of reasoning is what caused the LGPL to be introduced, > surely? Quite probably. But the author of libreadline didn't choose to do this.
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