RE: AW: License proposal

Hi,

I've been lurking for, well, a couple years now... I thought I'd throw my 2
cents in on this important topic. First, I'd like to refer people to this
article:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2001/12/12/transition.html

The short article talks mostly to the GPL, but has interesting commentary on
the *percieved* fear of commercial exploitation and on a few problems with the
LGPL.

As related to the issue at hand for Barracuda, I still have a few outstanding
questions (some repeated from previous posts) and comments:

1. While the notion of "import ..." seems to have been put to rest, exactly
what are the implications of extending LGPL code?

Even though Barracuda is designed to be used this way, I still find myself
thinking that extending a class creates a "derivative work". If so, my
understanding is that the new class would need to be LGPL as well. If that's
correct, then LGPL may not be the correct license. (Of course, the
interface/plugin architecture discussed in the Slashdot thread may alleviate
this problem.)

2. In the context of the article mentioned above, why does the Barracuda
community oppose an Apache/BSD-style license? Is there a real fear of
exploitation?

I don't intend these questions to be rhetorical, I really am curious about the
communities' opinion here. :-) IMOHO, even blatant commercial exploitation does
not detract from the open-source project at all. The community still has it's
code and can continue to add new functionality. This is certainly debatable and
I do understand the opposing view that wants (and has the right) to have any
modifications re-submitted to the community. I would point to Struts for a good
example, though. Many software vendors now use Struts in their commercial
products. I believe this has led to an increased adoption and acceptance of
Struts by the greater development community and thus to more activity and
advancement of the open-source project. I don't think it has led to any real
problems of exploitation.

3. Does XMLC's LGPL status (I think) have any implications on Barracuda?

Thanks!

John