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

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Re: Open Source Agreements

Author:	Eric Kidd
Posted:	8/23/2000; 12:52:21 PM
Topic:	A History of "Open Source"
Msg #:	19988 (In response to 19948)
Prev/Next:	19987 / 19989

This "larger work" bit is the key thats missing from the GPL and it prevents a lot of folx who are trying to build larger systems from using GPL code.

Yes. The Free Software Foundation actually uses two copyleft licenses: the GPL and the LGPL. (The second license used to be called the "Library General Public License", but Stallman changed the name to the "Lesser General Public License".)

The LGPL addresses most of the concerns you mention.

But I've also been trying to keep this discussion philosophical, and to stay out of the mind-numbing details of license politics. ;-)

(If your company is releasing code, however, I'd be happy to talk to your corporate counsel. Quite frankly, the whole open source licensing situation is one big, festering swamp of legalese.)

Cheers,
Eric

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