On 21 janv. 08, at 14:17, weekendadventure wrote:
I understand the law correctly. In fact, I believe that at least
two other
companies use Ooo as its source-- NeoOffice and Staroffice; AND
Staroffice
also charges for the product but does not offer modifications as
opensource.
What is the difference between StarOffice doing this and Butler?
The LGPL and the GPL are two different licenses.
If GPL code is distributed, _all_ the modifications to the code _must_
be available under the GPL.
LGPL is now called the "lesser" GPL but it was originally the
"library" GPL. It was designed to allow free libraries to be embedded
in a non-free system.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
Hence, as long as the LGPLed library code is not modified it is not
necessary to release the embedding code.
StarOffice uses OOo as a "library" and supposedly adds only "coating"
to it. Hence it does not have to release its proprietary code.
NeoOffice also uses OOo as a "library" _but_ not only adds "coating",
under the GPL but also fixes the LGPL code with GPL code. Hence,
NeoOffice has to release all its code (which it does).
But, since SUN does not want GPL code that would force it to release
all its extra coating, SUN refuses GPL fixes not only for StarOffice
but also for OpenOffice.org.
As far as Butler is concerned, it seems that what they release (for
Mac at least) is the NeoOffice version of OOo. Since NeoOffice is
GPLed/LGPLed, Butler _must_ offer access to the Mac version modified
code. It is not the case for the Windows/Linux versions they
distribute where they are like StarOffice, as I would suppose.
Jean-Christophe Helary
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