Re: [Plib-devel] Licensing for Console Applications.

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Paul Bleisch wrote:
> 
> I cannot really make any comment other than the license
> for plib (specifically sg and ssg) is one major reason
> we don't use (and therefore contribute to) plib.  As
> a rule it is very difficult to foresee what exact
> interpretation of [L]GPL we can expect even if we (or
> our lawyers) feel we are adhering to the letter of the
> license.  Adhering to the letter is usually not good
> enough (as you allude to) and not being able to guarantee
> that we can adhere to the spirit given all of the
> varying levels of ideology involved with [L]GPL means
> that we really cannot even consider using something like
> PLIB (so we don't end up looking like we are "stealing"
> from the community).  We don't want to end up a(nother)
> Slashdot poster case for "big bad evil commercial company"
> beating down the [L]GPL.

Well, I think that if you stick to the letter of the LGPL,
you won't have any problems. 

I think that if you *CAN* do that (which implies putting
*ALL* your changes back into the public domain) - then you
are certainly meeting the spirit of the important parts
of the license.

The problem with console applications is that the actual
guys doing the coding are unable to donate back a certain
subset of the changes they make (because of NDA). The
whole LGPL section about allowing end-users to relink their
code against new versions is just plain silly when all the
code is in an EPROM cartridge - and the console doesn't have
compilers, linkers or even a 'cat' command!

Those people simply cannot meet the *letter* of the LGPL - but
they ARE perfectly able to meet the *spirit* of it by contributing
code that isn't using NDA'd API's back to the standard code
distribution.  That's why I'd like to figure out a way to
relax the LGPL license enough for them to stay legal - yet
no go so far as to allow them to simply plunder our efforts
for no return to the common good.

> I can't make a recommendation as to what license to use, but
> I would think (thinking out loud) that restricting the new
> license to consoles is not the way to go.  Proprietary APIs
> exist on platforms other than consoles (and Windows), there
> are other embedded applications, and it would be difficult
> to define "console" well enough to keep lawyers at bay.

Good point.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
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