Upgrading to LGPLv3?

Upgrading to LGPLv3?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Eventually, we may want to switch to LGPLv3.  As you may already know,
the main issue is that releasing `libguile' under LGPLv3 will preclude
applications released under the GPLv2 *only* from using it [0].

I'm not sure there are many such applications but this very possibility
may be a sufficient incentive to delay the switch until the next stable
release or so.  There have been discussions on `gnu-prog-discuss' about
other libraries that have similar concerns (e.g., GnuTLS), and the
decision was indeed to delay the licence upgrade.

Opinions?

Thanks,
Ludovic.

[0] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility



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Re: Upgrading to LGPLv3?

[Bruce Korb]

Ludovic Courte`s wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Eventually, we may want to switch to LGPLv3.  As you may already know,
> the main issue is that releasing `libguile' under LGPLv3 will preclude
> applications released under the GPLv2 *only* from using it [0].
...
> Opinions?
Ask the Guile user list?  Isn't that where Guile clients tend to
hang out?  (Me and a few others excepted.)  I don't care myself.


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Re: Upgrading to LGPLv3?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Bruce Korb <bkorb@gnu.org> writes:

> Ask the Guile user list?  Isn't that where Guile clients tend to
> hang out?  (Me and a few others excepted.)

Yes, definitely.

I'm waiting for feedback from RMS who suggested that we may be better
off with the forthcoming LGPLv2.5 which "is essentially GPLv2|LGPLv3",
he said.  This would allow GPLv2-only programs to continue using Guile,
which addresses the main issue IMO.

Thanks,
Ludovic.



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Re: Upgrading to LGPLv3?

[Greg Troxel]

  As you may already know, the main issue is that releasing `libguile'
  under LGPLv3 will preclude applications released under the GPLv2
  *only* from using it [0].

  [0] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility

I didn't infer that from the link.

A more important question is the continued ability to use guile in
proprietary programs.

Earlier guile was licensed under GPL or the "guile exception", in order
to encourage people to use guile instead of tcl.

In my view guile is in danger of becoming irrelevant (or already is
irrelevant, or never really attained relevancy) in the broader software
community.

The greater degree of license freedom that the exception gave is IMHO
still warranted.  It's not like someone is going to put guile in an
appliance and sell it, with the value being way higher because it's
guile and not python, lua, tcl, or one of the other 12 scheme
interpreters, thereby subverting the intent of the v3 changes.


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Re: Upgrading to LGPLv3?

[Andy Wingo]

Hi Greg,

On Tue, 2007-07-17 at 09:34 -0400, Greg Troxel wrote:
> I didn't infer that [LGPLv3 was incompatible with GPLv2] from the link.

Look again; it is there (lower-left box of
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility).
The only reason that LGPLv2 libraries can be used in GPLv2 programs is
the clause in LGPLv2 that its code may be converted to be under GPLv2.

> A more important question is the continued ability to use guile in
> proprietary programs.

Of course that will be the case.

Cheers,

Andy.
-- 
http://wingolog.org/


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