Jeremy makes a persuasive argument for LGPL

[Sean Farley]

On Mon, 18 Feb 2002 14:41, Roland wrote:

> At 12:32 PM 2/15/02 -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
>
> >Exactly the opposite is true. When the (L)GPL is stamped
> >onto code, every commercial programmer must reinvent
> >the wheel rather than using it. Many of these programmers
> >work for small businesses that are trying to compete
>
> Another good point from your side.
> And here comes another question from my side:
> The point in favor of the GPL as brought by Jeremy, is that the xGPL will
> encourage contributions. I have to agree with Jeremie: with the BSD
> license, companies will tend to keep things back. Look at Apples OS-X. It
> is based on BSD, but they probably NEVER will make their code public. So
> what benefit does the community have from it?

They have release Darwin as well as an NFS testing tool.  FreeBSD did
benefit a lot from that testing tool.

> Jeremie pointed out, that he wants to give all code produced in his company
> back to the WINE-tree. Now if WINE is GPL he will have an excellent
> argument for his customers: sorry, we have to contribute all code back.

I believe he already stated that he currently requires that their code
be contributed back to WINE.

> If WINE is not GPLd, his customers will probably want to keep the code
> proprietary, in order to have a competitive advantage over others...
> What can you say about that Brett?

I still don't understand the problem for Jeremy from a commercial stand
point.  His company is paid to develop code.  Under either the BSD or
LGPL, he would have the same situation.

Besides, as the owner of a company, he can always decide not to develop
code for those potential customers who wish to keep the resulting code
closed.

> Maybe there is another kind of license that could adress both issues...but
> I doubt it...

Sean
--------------
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