Brian,
On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 10:14:39AM -0800, Brian Granger wrote:
>
> > Brian email: do you mean that it is difficult to understand legal
> > wording? Hm, yes, legal texts are difficult, but LGPL is with us for
> > ~ 15 years already, and I personally always thought that there is a
> > clear traction of it, e.g. as written here:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License
>
> No I don't mean that. While some legal documents are difficult to
> understand because of legal jargon, that is not the main problem I
> have with the GPL/LGPL. The problem is that their *interpretation* is
> complex. A few examples:
>
> * In a previous email you gave an example (the 2 physicists) intending
> to show how the LGPL would provide certain kinds of protections. Yet,
> as pointed out, the LGPL doesn't provide the protections you said it
> would. In my mind, this shows that the LGPL is sufficiently complex
> that even people who advocate for it can't keep it straight what it
> actually says. I know, you will probably counter and say that this
> was a bad/careless example, but that is my point - it is too easy for
> all of us to get confused about what these licenses say. I know - I
> have done this countless times myself.
Yes, I was not careful enough to adjust it to LGPL. I've just wanted to
show the spirit, and also I'm very overworked - it was not from
misunderstanding -- it took me the whole day to compose that main mail,
and like no software is perfect, neither was my first iteration.
Some years ago I've carefully read both GPLv2 and LGPLv2, and though I
don't remember the exact words, all my understanding up to this day
about LGPLv2 in essence is "Fair use of SymPy v0.2":
"""
Fair use of SymPy v0.2
----------------------
You can use SymPy as you want, and we encourage you to build various
products on top of SymPy including commercial and closed-source ones.
Your own code that uses SymPy as a library can perfectly stay
proprietary.
But if you change SymPy itself *and* redistribute SymPy with this
changes, you have to also provide your modifications to whom you
distribute SymPy.
Your other code still stays yours and can be distributed on whatever
terms you like.
To legally state what we think is our "Fair use of SymPy" we adopt
LGPL license.
(plus there are words about providing object files for relinking,
with newer version of the library, but for dynamically loaded
libraries this is not relevant)
"""
And also the same says Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License
(note "Linking from code with a different license: Yes" for LGPL. for
GPL it is "No")
And also the same says practice (glibc, winelib, gtk+, cairo, other
LGPL'ed libraries)
> * At some point in the last year, I was at a large, high profile
> national meeting, where a core developer of a large GPL'd project was
> giving a talk. Someone in the audience (who was not familiar with the
> GPL) asked "what license restrictions will there be on my code if it
> uses your GPL'd project." The speaker replied "none whatsoever, you
> can do whatever you want with your code."
Then _that_ speaker was not correct, becase GPL does not allow "doing
whatever you want with your code" -- it wants your code under GPL too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License
("Linking from code with a different license: No")
> There are a dozens of ways
> of explaining this away, however, this is really what the speaker
> said. Again, these licenses are complicated enough that even projects
> who use the licenses can't keep it all straight.
Yes, law is difficult area. laws and licensing and copyright and trade
marks are even a bit slightly different in different countries, but even
if we consider US, it's law system was patched along ~ 200 years.
Needless to say, that it's a mess now :)
Seriously though - yes, it is difficult to understand GPL and LGPL
correctly, but this is definitely possible. For full correctness law
education is nesseccary. But we, developers can understand it too, and
there are a lot of developers to whom I personally trust who analyzed
those documents too, and got it spirit exactly like me.
So I have some confidence I've got GPL and LGPL right for common cases.
> * The only way of deciding which interpretation of a legal document is
> correct is to have it tested in court. Because the subtle areas of
> the GPL/LGPL have not been tested in court (please correct me if I am
> wrong), it doesn't really matter to me that the LGPL has been around
> and used for 15 years. That won't help me one bit if there is ever a
> court ruling that goes against my interpretation of the license. To
> me this involves risk that must be accounted for in these decisions.
> BSD like licenses have very few grey areas.
GPL was actually tested in court quite a bit:
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/GPL-violation-by-Skype-re-affirmed-by-court--/110703
and
http://www.gpl-violations.org/ e.g.
http://www.gpl-violations.org/news/20041024-linux-tomtom.html
http://www.gpl-violations.org/news/20060210-svc-gesundheitskarte.html
http://www.gpl-violations.org/news/20050601-targa-lidl-notebook.html
...
although I admit I can't find LGPL testing in court right now.
I think asking SFLC could help:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
Also interesting:
http://lwn.net/Articles/294767/
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html
--
Kirill
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