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

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

Eric Kidd <eric.kidd@pobox.com> writes:

> There's nothing wrong with putting a library under the GPL, but it
> *does* prevent some of us from using it in free software. At my day
> job, I write code with an MIT-style license (similar to that of
> XFree86), and I lack the influence to change the license.
> 
> The package in question is a multithreaded, high-performance mail
> server which I'm porting to Linux. One of the server's features isn't
> available under Linux--it has built-in monitoring of processor load,
> free disk space and other server statistics. I was considering using
> LibGTop to implement this feature, but this won't be possible if
> LibGTop is GPL'd instead of LGPL'd.
> 
> So here are two problems with using the GPL instead of the LGPL:
> 
>  * Another free software project will either loose a feature or waste
>    time rewriting half of LibGTop.
>  * I won't be able to convince my boss to let me port LibGTop to
>    strange (and currently unsupported) Unix systems.
> 
> Now, I don't much care (my boss will either accept that this feature
> is missing on Linux, or pay me to implement it), and LibGTop *is* your
> library. So I won't tell you it's wrong to use the GPL, but I want you
> to understand all the consequences. ;-)

Preventing other free software projects from using LibGTop is really
against my wishes and now that I'm aware of the consequences I'll keep
the LGPL (see also my other long message about this).

For me, this is a change: I changed the license of LibGTop from a
blindly-chosen-whatever-no-matter-what-but-opensource to a reasonable
license for it, the LGPL.

Thanks to all people that helped me to make up my mind about this.
-- 
Martin Baulig - martin@home-of-linux.org - http://www.home-of-linux.org