Pier, On Sunday, Jan 26, 2003, at 11:58 US/Pacific, Pier Fumagalli wrote:
If (for example) we, the ASF, decided to get the library and make some modifications to it, or, scarier though, we _had_ to "fork" the library for our own needs (imagine, the orignal author changes from LGPL to something else, full GPL for example -as happened lately to the MySQL JDBC drivers- or even worse, decides the library will only be distributed as "commercial software"), then we would be utterly f***ed.Under the same logic, nothing prevents somebody to take any project from Apache and release it under their own commercial license, without releasing any source code at all for any change. The Apache Software License is of no use either in such a situation, since there is no provision that prevents such forks to happen.
I think the real issue is not the _license_, but the _copyright_. If you're the copyright holder, you can change the license at will or you can release the same code under different licenses. That's why a license change was possible in the case of MySQL's JDBC driver. It was not LGPL that was viral, it was the copyright holder. That's why Apache and FSF require their contributors to assign the copyrights to the respective foundations. [One nice thing about FSF is that once you transfer your copyright to them, they even give you the right to continue distributing your original code under a restrictive license.]
Ethically the ASF does not develops software under a "viral" license, therefore, given the "partial virality" of LGPL, we wouldn't be able to "fork" and maintain such a library. We wouldn't even be able to change the license, all modifications would have to be LGPL, so, we either would have to rewrite the whole thing, or get rid of the offending bits and bobs...This is FUD! What is the problem with your changes being LGPL? If what matters is the software continuing to be free software, it should be fine with you. The changes you make are copyrighted by you, so the original developer will not be able to take your improvements and release them under a commercial, more restrictive license without your consent.
Linux worked just fine on exactly these principles, using GPL, an even more restrictive license than LGPL. Sure you may not like that Linux is not copyrighted by your favorite foundation, but is that a good reason to rewrite the whole thing?
Soooo, I'd say, if you see the word GPL somewhere (with or without the leading L) my answer is usually no, because now or in the future it could/will create problems...I don't think LGPL is a problem. Informed commercial companies (big ones too) are routinely using LGPL code with no problems, even in commercial products, without encountering any legal issues. It's a shame open source developers stumble on such issues, rather than discussing the technical merits of the code and collaborating on software that solves the problem. Rewriting the code to conform to a license is a poor choice IMO.
Regards,
--
Ovidiu Predescu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.google.com/search?btnI=&q=ovidiu (I'm feeling lucky)
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