Re: contrib and licensing

mlw wrote:
>
> Jan Wieck wrote:
> >[...]
> >screen? We have a pure BSD alternative that we could even ship with our
> >distro, time to retire the libreadline hooks.
> >
> >
> I certainly didn't want to open up this can of worms, that's for sure.
>
> I have an amount of code that is LGPL, I would rather use it than write
> the bits again or try to extract them from the whole. The actual
> extension would be BSD, but it would need to link with my library. I
> made the library LGPL (from GPL) for the PHP group who have similar
> restrictions.
>
> Thus this discussion.

If it is "your" library as you've said multiple times now, there is
nothing that can stop you from relicensing it. Give me one good reason
why you have to keep your library under the LGPL, or better why it
cannot be relicensed under BSD.

> I don't know what the answer is, but to say "NO LGPL" seems a bit
> extream, especially if you already have such dependencies. Then if you
> conclude you do allow LGPL libraries, but then only allow some
> libraries, not all, then what is the criteria for choosing which
> libraries get blessed. Is it purely "popularity?"

Not more extreme than "I am the only true license, you shall not have
any other licenses beside me", which is my personal interpretation of
the entire FSF attempt.

> Do you guys really think that a contrib function should not be allowed
> to require code which may not be on a common UNIX/BSD/Linux box?

Your library does appear in what Unix distributions? And in which of
them is it installed by default like the libreadline? Yes, that
certainly has to do with popularity.

Jan

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