Re: (L)GPLv3

[Andy Wingo <wingo pobox com>]

Hello,

On Tue 06 Jul 2010 14:54, Holger Berndt <berndth gmx de> writes:

> On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:00:09 -0400 Ryan Lortie wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2010-07-06 at 09:26 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
>> > Do you feel okay with the idea of allowing proprietary apps to use
>> > our platform but not GPLv2 apps?
>> 
>> In short, yes.
>> 
>> Anybody who has an application that is GPLv2-only and has accepted
>> enough contributions that it has become an unreasonable proposition to
>> relicense has made a significant mistake. 

With my GNU maintainer hat on, I agree with Ryan here.

> The problem is not only with third-party apps that use the platform.
> There are also some significant GPLv2 only libraries that GNOME apps
> may want to use. As examples, Poppler and ClamAV come to my mind.

Incidentally, this is one of the major reasons that GNU PDF was made a
high priority project by the FSF: besides implementing a broader subset
of PDF, but to have it be LGPLvN+. Currently N is 3 for GNU PDF, but
also currently I hear poppler does a better job at what it does.

A number of GNU libraries are now LGPLv3+, FWIW.

> So basically, if Evince wants to use Poppler, it could not legally use
> a library (be it directly or indirectly) that is LGPLv3 (or later).
>
> Using LGPLv3 or later for platform stuff sounds like an explosive
> situation to me.

Agreed that it would cause some inconvenience, but there are fewer of
these cases than there were.

Still, given that GLib is not breaking ABI, it doesn't seem that LGPLv3+
is an option for it. We should however (IMO) promote GPLv3+ for
applications, where possible.

Regards,

Andy
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