The last LGPLed LibGTop 0.99.9 tarball - STOP the flamewar, please!

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

To stop the flamewar about the correct license of LibGTop:

There has a libgtop-0.99.9.tar.gz been available for about a week at

	http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/CIP/baulig/gnome/

which is now at (so I won't get killed by the sysop when the server
load gets too hight there ...):

	ftp://ftp.home-of-linux.org/pub/libgtop/0.99.9/

This tarball has the same code than LibGTop 0.100.0 but the old
LGPL copyright.

Every person who downloaded this tarball during this week has the legal
right to use it under its old copyright, the LGPL (except the few files
that were taken from GNU Emacs and GNU Fileutils which still have their
original copyright, the GPL).

I can't stop anyone from doing this, it's their legal right that the
LGPL gives them - so there is no reason to shout that "LibGTop can't be
used anymore".

Paragraph 3 of the LGPL:

    You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public
    License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library. To
    do this, you must alter all the notices that refer to this License,
    so that they refer to the ordinary GNU General Public License,
    version 2, instead of to this License. (If a newer version than
    version 2 of the ordinary GNU General Public License has appeared,
    then you can specify that version instead if you wish.) Do not make
    any other change in these notices.

    Once this change is made in a given copy, it is irreversible for
    that copy, so the ordinary GNU General Public License applies to all
    subsequent copies and derivative works made from that copy.

So everyone contributing to a LGPLed library must live with the inherent
danger that someone distributes copies of this library under the ordinary
GPL and that other people may prefer to use theese copies so they will
become "standard".

I think it is only *fair* to *tell* people that the license *will* change
to the ordinary GPL one day - it's up to them to still contribute to it
or not.

So all the people telling me to continue releasing LibGTop under the LGPL
and to change it to the GPL some time in future will only make more
people oppressed than my change ever did.

If some proprietary company donnates larger pieces of work to a LGPLed
LibGTop and I decide to change it to the GPL, this will make them really
angry - but it is my legal right according to paragraph 3 of the LGPL.

The GPL is to protect my and other peoples good from from being tampered
with and abused by proprietary companies.

Using some piece of free software in a proprietary program *does* harm
the free software community - since that company will save a lot of
money, money that they have but we don't, if they simply can use our
code.

Finally, can we *please* stop all flamewar about this at least for this
week and continue doing constructive work for GNOME 1.0.

I will not answer any posting that tries to convince me to use a different
license until GNOME 1.0 is definitely released - reading and answering
unproductive mail wastes way too much time.

In the Spirit of Free Software,
-- 
Martin Baulig - martin@home-of-linux.org - http://www.home-of-linux.org