Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Patrik Stridvall wrote:

> They had a goal and I'm sure a lot of competent people did the best
> they could be accieve it.
> 
> However, you can do the impossible no matter how hard you try.


And this is precisely why your entire dissertation about the derived work
doctrine is competely irrelevant for the current discussion.

Let me explain. People had an idea: the spirit of the LGPL (which I
defined in earlier emails). A lot of bright and competent people tried to
formalize it for the current body of laws. They came up with the LGPL. As
such, allow me to consider the LGPL the best available license which
formalized the above mentioned spirit.

Now, there are two possibilities. The laws allows one to license code under
the LGPL spirit or they don't. We don't know. If they do, the LGPL is
OK. If they don't, no other license would, so there's _no_point_ in
bitching about the LGPL, because nothing else could do a better job!

In other words, if you're OK with the LGPL spirit, you can not do any
better than going with the it. Period.

But, I hear you say, 'why change the license if it doesn't give you any
protection?' Well, this is where your reasoning is flawed, because the
LGPL gives you quite a bit of protection. And this is because there is at
least a 50% chance that it is enforceable, and this is _good_enough_ in
practice. This is trivial to see: the market place is littered with
unenforceable EULAs, yet they seem to do the job. Why? Because big
companies will have not desire whatsoever to test these licenses in court,
since they have to much too loose (remember, big companies = have $$$),
while small companies can build on a business plan based on such shaky
grounds, as no one is going to fund such ventures. Add to this the immense
public pressure, and you have Protection, with a capital P.

And just for shits and giggles, if you think _any_ license will give you
absolute protection, you are sadly mistaken. And the reason this can not
happen is rather simple: the laws change.

--
Dimi.