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

GPL+BSD

Author:Eric Kidd
Posted:9/9/2000; 4:30:31 PM
Topic:Guido and Richard
Msg #:21085 (In response to 21083)
Prev/Next:21084 / 21086

GPLed libraries ARE a bitch. Most people,except a few downright stupid ones(no moral judgement there :-), use the LGPL...

(LGPL == "Lesser GPL" or "Library GPL")

Yes. This is the cooperative thing to do.

A Note to the other poster who was worried that GPL + BSD = GPL, that isn't precicely true.

From the silly-legal-theories department, courtesy of RMS himself:

So if you want to write a non-copylefted application, release it under the X11 license, and link it with a GPL-covered library, that is allowed. The linked executable would be covered by the GPL, of course, but the app source code would be covered by the X11 license alone.

This theory is legally plausible, but way beyond the attention span of the average judge. This theory also conflicts with some of RMS's other legal theories, as far as I can tell.

As far as I'm concerned, this license stuff is silly. ;-) And I'm more than a little annoyed by GPL'd libraries.

Cheers,
Eric




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