From: Mike A. H. <mh...@ww...> - 2003-07-19 23:04:10
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On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Eero Pajarre wrote: >> BTW, as I read the license, wouldn't it be good to have a license which >> requires to license the source code of freeglut back to the project if >> somebody uses it and improves it? >> >> I personally like the LGPL for free libraries, be cause I've more more >> excited by "free software"(e.g. Linux Kernel) than a just by >> "open source"(e.g. BSD, X11), but it depends if we want to allow >> closed source commercialisation of freeglut in the future or not. >> > >It seems to be somewhat common misconception that LGPL requires >"licensing source code back to the project". (At least I have >seen John also saying something like that). In fact (but IANAL) >it requires distributing the source code to only those people >who otherwise receive the software from you. You are also not >allowed to restrict the rights (including redistribution) of >those other people. It is in no way guaranteed that improvements >would appear in the main distributions. > >If implemented literally and with bad intentions this could lead >to a horrible mess of different code variations floating around. > >If on the other hand the participating people are nice, other >licenses like Xfree or MIT will achieve the same positive effects >of commutinity development IMHO. > >Also it is a fact that there are people who would drop using >freeglut immediatelly if it would be available only under LGPL, >and the community would lose their (perhaps small) contributions >to the project. As long as freeglut is under an OSI approved license, and _not_ "GPL", it will likely be included in any Linux distributions without problems. MIT/BSD/LGPL are all fine for libraries. Only the GPL is bad for libraries, as it would not allow people using GLUT to link proprietary software to freeglut if freeglut was "GPL". That is the main difference between GPL and LGPL. LGPL allows linkage of proprietary code to the library, GPL does not. However, any license not MIT or BSD or similar would as I mentioned in my last mail, preclude inclusion in XFree86 sources. -- Mike A. Harris |