Ciaran O'Riordan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Encouraging contributions isn't usually a motivation to switch to LGPL. The > writers of proprietary software will generally keep the most useful > functionality in their application code (rather than in your library) and > will contribute as little as possible. > > A permissive licence (such as the LGPL) can be good if you want your > application to define an open standard. For example, the Ogg Vorbis library > for playing that audio format is under a very permissive licence because the > goal is to make Ogg a widely used standard (so that free software developers > can work with an open, patent-free standard instead of the possibly patented > mp3 format). > > The LGPL can also be good if you think that your field will naturally be > dominated by a single software package and you think you might loose a > head-to-head competition with some proprietary rival. This is the case for > the GNU standard C library (glibc). It makes technical sense for all > GNU/Linux operating systems to use the same libc, and if the developers of > proprietary software for GNU/Linux wanted to write their own libc, they > probably could. So to ensure that they don't feel a need to do that, glibc > was released under the LGPL. > > So unless you find yourself in either of those rare situations, then it's > probably best to stay with the GPL. > > You've probably read this, but just in case: > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html > > Hope that helps.
Thanks, Ciaran, for the discussion and very useful information. It indeed helps, and pretty much coincides with (and clarifies) my original thinking -- not much reason (for me) to use the lgpl. I hadn't seen why-not-lgpl.html before, but have read it now. And I've replied to the email lgpl request, informing him that mimetex will remain gpl'ed. Thanks again, -- John Forkosh ( mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] where j=john and f=forkosh ) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
