Re: Does the LGPL encourage sharing of code?

Roland <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> one of the arguments in favour of the LGPL is that it encourages sharing

the proper phrasing is "*requires* disclosure and relicense" (at least, if
you are talking about the copyleft portions of LGPL).

> of code. If people need to extend a LGPLed product to fit their needs they
> will have to give all their changes back.

pending on how one "extends" it.

> On the other hand, it might also be the case that instead of using the
> LGPLed product they decide to rewrite everything from scratch. This is
> especially true if they intend to make a business out of selling an
> extended product.

One must point out that X11/BSD must also rewrite, if they want to stay
Free - anything that isn't *GPL must be re-written.
 
> As the quantity of LGPLed code grows more and more companies will think
> about using this codebase instead of rewriting from scratch. This will lead
> to more code being contributed back. On the other hand this can make it
> very hard for companies to make a profit. I think RedHat has yet to prove
> that this model actually works.

There are only barely marginal examples of *GPL based software successes that
I know of.  This whole "service based" model is sucking wind.  Look at these
numbers from the linux camp:  http://lwn.net/2002/0321/

> If a companie can't make money with this business model they won't use
> LGPLed and so the license won't accomplish what it inteded: to encourage
> sharing. People just will rewrite from scratch or seek other products that
> have a less restrictive license like BSD/X11.

Yes, but the GPL causes problems in the economic sense too, since non-leveragable,
zero cost items, drives out most of the competitors.  In the physical markets,
this is called "dumping". 
 
> The question is also, how much could would have been shared if the license
> was X11?
> What do you think?
> 

My suspicion (though there is no way to prove this) is that you will have many
more propriatary implementations, but the quality of the result would be better.
BSD (unlike the *GPL) does not discourage reuse of code, but doesn't give too much
incentive to free up large pieces of code.  So, the question you have to answer is,
"would you rather have source code, or do you want variety?"

-r