Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Do applications differ from libraries?

Author:Eric Kidd
Posted:9/9/2000; 10:40:52 AM
Topic:Guido and Richard
Msg #:21071 (In response to 21064)
Prev/Next:21070 / 21072

I doubt Per Bothner wanted his libraries not to be used, so I e-mailed him about the issue, and he was kind enough to change gnu.bytecode and gnu.expr's licenses to a modified GPL that rather strongly resembles the LGPL and is MPL-compatible.

This is the polite way to handle these situations. Ask the author to fix the broken license. (I'm only aware of three developers who have ever said no.)

But why was such a conversation necessary in the first place?

Because people insist on using the GPL for libraries, which is bogus. In my opinion, libraries shouldn't be pushy about application licenses. (And I've publicly criticized Stallman for suggesting otherwise.)

Applications, though, are different from libraries. Would it be right to create a proprietary version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program without the authors' permission?

Cheers,
Eric

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