Re: [Off Topic] We need "Vendor"s? [was Words to Avoid "Vendor"]

["Richard M. Stallman" <rms gnu org>]

    Our platform is LGPL, not GPL. Push for a crazy relicensing referendum or
    something if you don't like GNOME's aims.

Miguel and I made the decision to use the Lesser GPL for many GNOME
libraries for a specific strategic reason.

The purpose of GNOME was to prevent the danger that KDE and non-free
Qt would become de facto the standard desktop used with GNU/Linux.  To
achieve this goal, GNOME had to be a success, and one way to help
achieve that success was to allow non-free apps to work with it.
Non-free apps could use Qt (by paying a fee), so if they could not
work with GNOME at all, GNOME would be at a great disadvantage.

We decided to use the LGPL for many GNOME libraries to prevent this
disadvantage.  We also decided that some specialized libraries, whose
functionality was not necessary just for an app to work with
GNOME,should use the GPL, so as to give free apps a boost over
non-free ones.

Today Qt is free software, which is a big change in the situation.
Nonetheless, GNOME and KDE remain rivals, and we would not make the
world a better place if we told the developers of these non-free apps
"Go use Qt instead."  It still seems that using the LGPL for basic
GNOME libraries is the best policy, and we still want to encourage the
developers of those non-free apps to make them work with GNOME.

However, we have to be careful in how we do that.  The mere fact of
using a free library for GUI purposes does not erase the ethical blot
of denying the user's freedom.  But if we say anything good about
non-free applications that use GNOME, people could easily take that as
implying that these non-free applications are ethical and legitimate,
that their existence is a good thing.

We want to encourage non-free apps to use GNOME, but we don't want to
appear to grant those non-free apps ethical legitimacy.  We have to
choose our words with care to achieve both goals at once.