Licensing response and an idea

[Brett Glass]

At 08:13 AM 2/14/2002, Christopher Dewey wrote:

>Brett, you continue to ignore that the (L)GPL implicitly
>treats *everyone* as programmers, regardless of their occupation,
>motives, intent, or what they actually end up doing with the
>software.

Not true. It singles out the activities in which only professional 
programmers need to engage in order to make a living, and penalizes
that group specifically by attempting to prevent them from making
a living. "The GNU Manifesto" explicitly states this intent.

>The issue at hand is that neither the LGPL, nor the current Wine
>license meet every Wine developer's needs and goals, with the
>consequense that the development effort spent on Wine may be
>slowed or fragmented.

Is that possible? What if the goal of some of the developers is
simply to sabotage the business models of others?

>It's a real problem, and a compromise is required.

The current license is far and away the best compromise. The
(L)GPL is not a compromise; it is an extreme. The public domain
is the other extreme. The X11 license sits in the middle.

--Brett