Re: a better copyleft licence

[Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org>]

Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>:

> I thought we had proposed a reasonably decent paragraph to the KDE
> people?  Can't that be dusted off and used in different contexts?

Maybe. I haven't seen that paragraph.

> >   In addition to the permissions in the GNU General Public Licence, if
> >   this software forms part of a program or library ("this work") then you
> >   may compile and link this work with other programs or libraries ("the
> >   other works") and distribute the resulting program or library in object
> >   code or executable form under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General
> >   Public Licence with the additional special exception to Section 3 of
> >   that licence that the source code distributed need not include the
> >   source code for the other works, provided that this work can reasonably
> >   be considered an independent and separate work from the other works and
> >   that the other works can reasonably be considered independent and
> >   separate works from this work.
> 
> I'm not sure what advantage this (this clause plus the GPL) is supposed
> to have over just using the LGPL?

The LGPL doesn't seem to prevent someone from adding a non-free
extension to a program. My clause is supposed to prevent the worst
abuses by insisting that the added code can reasonably be considered
an independent and separate work.

Also, the LGPL constantly refers to libraries, which would make it
somewhat awkward to apply it to a program which isn't a library.

Edmund