Alex Perry wrote: > I don't see a real benefit of changing FGFS from GPL to LGPL ... > * The people who don't like GPL probably aren't much happier about LGPL > * They (or we) can add a shared-memory tunnel in SimGear for properties > * Most proprietary extensions can simply coexist as separate programs
I'm inclined to agree. The only real purpose behind the LGPL is to special case the situation of GNU versions of "system" libraries. Applying the GPL strictly to libraries like libc or libstdc++ means that proprietary software can't be run on free operating systems, since the act of linkage makes them a "derived work" according to the license. That's silly, so there's a special-purpose variant of the license that allows linkage (but *only* linkage) of proprietary code. The LGPL has since become popular for library projects that are designed to become standards, or at least widely shared. Projects like plib and SDL use it for that reason -- to keep development open while encouraging use of the library by anyone. FlightGear doesn't really fall into either category, since it's a one-of-a-kind codebase that is used only by other GPLed software. It strikes me that putting, say, the scenery engine under the LGPL isn't likely to encourage anyone to use it as the "standard" scenery engine for anything. Users who want the code are likely going to want to hack at it for their own purposes, which the LGPL forbids. Is there a use case here, or a particular proprietary application you have in mind? It might be simpler to do a custom release to that vendor under a separate license, rather than play with the license for the whole project. The LGPL is a little problematic for most proprietary users. They aren't, contrary to common belief, allowed to use the library any way they want. They have to link expressly against the library as shipped (no cutting and pasting of code), and have to ensure that future users can relink against newer versions of the library if they want (no static linkage, essentially). Andy -- Andrew J. Ross NextBus Information Systems Senior Software Engineer Emeryville, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nextbus.com "Men go crazy in conflagrations. They only get better one by one." - Sting (misquoted) _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
