Re: Licensing

[Murray Cumming <murrayc usa net>]

On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 06:24, wurzin ywave com wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Jun 2003 wurzin ywave com wrote:
> Although I can't see that the desire on the part of the authors for these
> copyrights was to eliminate the possible participation of proprietary
> software in free software environments such as Linux; The wording of the
> licenses is non-the-less pretty heavy handed and restrictive.
> 
> They don't spell out things sufficiently such as the difference between
> statically linking and dynamically linking software to open source
> libraries.  They also state things in such a manner as to give themselves
> unlimited rights to works linked to such libraries depending on ones
> interpretation of the licenses wording.  Exactly what I would expect a
> lawyer to do.
> 
> I would like to believe, and am going to proceed under the assumption
> that their actual intent was to keep big corporate conglomerates from
> snatching up free software, copyrighting it, and then selling it as their
> own rather than free software conglomerates snatching up proprietary
> efforts in this environment and claiming them as THEIR own; Both practices
> I believe we would all find reprehensible.
> 
> So... I'm glad to be a part of this community and I hope that we'll be
> able to mutually enrich our lives and the operating environments that
> we've all grown to enjoy so much. :)

Many many companies are using LGPL libraries such as GTK+ to develop
closed-source product. Their lawyers seem to be satisfied. The LGPL is
well understood. It would be best to contact the FSF if you think they
should explain their licenses even more clearly. I think that licenses
for commercial libraries tend to be far more restrictive and vague.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murray usa net
www.murrayc.com