On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 02:26:32AM -0800, Kevin Lawton wrote: > Good god, here we go again with licensing discussions. > > Some thoughts. First, licensing is a good thing to talk > about when you start a project, or at least decide > to propel it into the OSS realm. But once you get > there, it's a done deal. Plex86 is LGPL for good > reasons, none of which matter now. If I did it > again, I'd use LGPL again.
It's not a done deal. You can change the LGPL to the GPL at any moment according to cause 3 of the LGPL. If there isn't any reason to license it under the LGPL, I suggest licensing it under the GPL. It protects the freedom of the code much better. I am not sure wether it's possible to run plex86 on windoze (I don't care about it either, but other people do afaics), but we could make an exception for that. Oh by the way, I don't speak about open source anymore, I prefer the term free software. You can find the reasons why I do speak about free software at the following homepage: http://www.fsfeurope.org/documents/whyfs.en.html > If one steps back a minute and looks at the big picture, > it is more obvious that the real issues regarding > many of these GPL vs LGPL discussions stem from > architectural defects in the software, not the > fscking license. Make everything modular by design, > give it a "library" license and then you can share it. > This of course means you need a common interface. Those > are technical issues. The LGPL isn't a license for libraries, only often used for that. That's why it's also renamed to Lesser GPL. The GPL is better for a lot of libraries. You can also make software modular by design and put it under the GPL, no problem with that. It's the thing what's done in GNU's kernel replacement, the Hurd (note: The Hurd isn't a kernel, it are a bunch of servers running on a microkernel). I don't see what licensing has to do with architectural defects. > But the biggest problem is that us OSS idiots repeatedly > reinvent stuff over and over and over. Then squabble when > we have trouble sharing code, because of inane licensing > issues. There might be a reason for reinventing stuff. Maybe to do it better, or because you have another goal in mind. I don't see why it's idiotic to reinvent something if you feel it is better to do. > "Fail to plan, plan to fail" > > My suggestion is that if sharing is desired, pursue a > common modular plugin interface. That might be useful, but that can sitll be done under the GPL. You should not do such things just because of the licenses, but because it's the Right Thing. Jeroen Dekkers -- Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org IRC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
