Re: Using GPL for LibGTop with an exception for the GNOME Project

[Martin Baulig <martin home-of-linux org>]

Havoc Pennington <hp@Mcs.Net> writes:

> As an aside Martin, I think just for the main Gnome UI libraries. libgtop
> isn't really something most apps would use; you could think of it instead
> as a common core for all GPL top-style apps.

Yes, I missed the point. It's really not required to have it LGPLed to
be used in Gnome. Thanks.

> > Secondly, GPL'ing LibGTop has a minor risk associated with it.  Imagine a
> > hypothetical OS, I'll call it FOOS.  FOOS is a very closed, proprietary
> > OS, in fact, the only published way of getting at system statistics is
> > through an add-on library, not shipped with the OS.  To get LibGTop
> > working on FOOS, you would have to either reverse engineer the hooks to
> > get the system statistics, or write the FOOS front-end to go through the
> > add-on library.  Without rereading the LGPL, I think it is much more
> > capable of handling such a situation gracefully than the GPL.
> >
> 
> Any Unix-ish system will have ps, top, blah blah shipped with it; which
> means it will have some way to get at the info under the GPL's system
> exception clause. If it doesn't it's a piece of crap anyway. :-) 
> This situation just doesn't sound very likely.

Even under this unlikely situation, there is a reason to have libgtop
under GPL: if some person ever manages to get a libgtop sysdeps port
written, then a free app using libgtop would have a real advantage over
commercial ones on this particular system.

> I agree, don't fool with the exception. Apps don't need libgtop to be
> Gnome-compliant, and the LGPL is being used purely to encourage apps with
> a variety of licenses to be Gnome-compliant. Extra features like
> libezpaint and libgtop should be GPL so that free Gnome-compliant apps are
> the best apps. These libs are really shared application components, not 
> part of the generic Gnome app development libraries.
> 
> You can always charge people money to get libgtop under an alternate
> license. :-)

Or even allow them to use it under the LGPL without charging money if
they have good arguments or if they are contributing enough to the
free software community (for instance RedHat Software).

-- 
Martin Baulig - martin@home-of-linux.org - http://www.home-of-linux.org