Re: L-GPL or BSD license for MCF libraries ?

[email protected] wrote:
> Any use of the MCF library in an application which is not GPL or LGPL licensed
> falls under section 6 of the LGPL license.  That section has several
> problematic clauses:
> 
>   6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a
>   "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing
>   portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice,
>   provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's
>   own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications.

Well, this is a lawyer languages, not ready for human beings like me ;)

> This, for a start, will prevent adoption by most commercial application
> vendors.  Almost no commercial licenses ever permit modification in any form,
> and most commercial developers are extremely loathe to grant such freedoms to
> their users (even if they are technically required to under most copyright laws
> anyway)..
> 
> According to section 6, anyone using the MCF libraries must also do one of the
> following (the following are paraphrased, but correspond basically with 6a and
> 6b of the license text):
> 
>   a) Include the complete source code of the MCF library, along with object
>      files for the application suitable for relinking with a modified form of
>      the MCF library (or provide an offer to easily obtain such materials, or
>      make them downloadable from the same place, etc)
> 
> Most commercial developers will probably not be willing to distribute MCF
> source code at all, let alone supply object modules for their own code suitable
> for relinking.

Well, the GPL (and LGPL) don't force you to ship the source code WITH 
the binary, but to make the source code available to everyone that 
receives the binary (could be after you have paid for the software !). 
But it can be a website where you can download the source code. I didn't 
read carefully (again) the license, but that's the "spirit" of the LGPL. 
So commercial companies wouldn't need to link to their own website but 
ours, unless they made modifications to the sources.

>   b) Use a dynamic-linking mechanism with a copy of the library "already
>      present on the user's computer system" (this is rather vague, but implies
>      that the library cannot be distributed along with the package but must be
>      installed separately by the user)

Actually without paraphrasing 6a : "Accompany the work with the complete 
corresponding machine-readable source code for the Library including 
whatever changes were used in the work". That would mean when you 
distribute the software... That's why I prefer the BXAPL which just say 
you need an affordable way to get the source (no other cost than shipping).

> Requiring users to download and install MCF libraries separately is not
> particularly attractive for commercial products which users want to open the
> box for, stick in the CD, and have just work.  It's fairly unlikely most
> commercial developers would want to choose this option, as it potentially makes
> their product significantly harder to install and use than their competition's
> might be.

That's right. But some companies would probably wouldn't do it and we 
wouldn't make much problem, as long as they give their modified sources 
to us. But you're right, the LGPL is not good for this...

We have to submit the BXAPL again for approval to the OSI (that's 
another thing I'm working on ;) very soon. Maybe that could be an 
option. I don't like the BSD because it gives too much power to big 
companies, to steal the work. (that's basically what I do at work, using 
some BSD code to put in a mobile phone)

> There is nothing in section 6 which permits anybody to "just give a link to our
> website" to satisfy it.  Doing so would not come close to bringing them into
> compliance with the LGPL's terms.
> 
> The LGPL really wasn't intended to address things like MCF's intended
> (wide-ranging) audience.. it was mainly done as the minimum number of changes
> to GPL terms to allow collaboration with some other non-GPL open-source
> projects.  It does make things significantly easier for other open-source
> licenses to work with than the GPL would, but the LGPL still contains a fair
> amount of the "proprietary is evil" mentality which can be problematic for most
> non-open-source software developers.

Yeah, LGPL doesn't seem so good any longer :(
And BSD not my taste neither.
The QPL could be an option or the MPL. They are both quite free, and 
still are "business oriented".
The BXAPL is a (good) mix of all this, but not yet OSI approved.

http://www.bixoft.nl/english/license.htm

(very long to read, but you can just read the Rationale)





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