Re: a better copyleft licence
Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org> writes:
> Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>:
>
> > > 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.
> >
> > That just means that someone can slap on somthing so that the code can
> > run standalone.
>
> I intend the expression to mean rather more than just that. I could
> add some explanation about what should reasonably be considered an
> independent and separate work, but I think it's clear that each part
> should be useful without the other part. For example, libssl is useful
> without mutt, and mutt is useful without libssl.
Is mutt not still being developed by the original authors ? -- I
though it was.
This is generally the get out clause that most GPL'd packages use
when linking against SSL etc.
> > My impression is that your clause actually offers less protection than
> > the LGPL.
>
> Why do you think it offers less protection? I was hoping it might
> offer more protection.
There is the matter of LGPL being in use already, which would make it
more protective in many people's eyes.
> Let's consider the example of someone adding to Mutt a non-GPL module
> that lets Mutt talk to some kind of mail server.
>
> If Mutt were licensed under the LGPL (assuming it makes sense to
> license a non-library under the LGPL) then I think you could make some
> random small changes to existing files and put most of the new code in
> separate files that could be licensed any way you want (and might be
> binary-only).
This isn't true, AFAIK, they would have to provide the extension as a
seperate library (even the static linking stuff wouldn't get around
this).
--
James Antill -- james@and.org
"If we can't keep this sort of thing out of the kernel, we might as well
pack it up and go run Solaris." -- Larry McVoy.
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