Andrew,

While I personally agree with your comments about the GPL, I feel that 
LGPL is OK for Smalltalk code, as apparantly does many within the 
Smalltalk community.

For example, http://wiki.cs.uiuc.edu/CampSmalltalk/Licensing seems to 
view LGPL as absolutely OK for Smalltalk code, and it has been widely 
discussed among many within Camp Smalltalk.

At http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html, Richard Stallman 
says "using the Library GPL permits use of the library in proprietary 
programs; using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only 
for free programs."  Of course, then the question of "what constitutes a 
'Library' for Smalltalk?" comes up, but I don't know how a reasonable 
person could *not* call externally distributed Smalltalk code a "Library".

Never-the-less, I personally plan on releasing any of my own Squeak code 
under the SqueakL license rather than LGPL.  As for GLORP (which I 
ported to Squeak), that code is copywritten by Alan Knight of Cincom, so 
he controls the license (which is LGPL).  And based on his posts, it 
seems that Alan has every intention of GLORP being used for commercial work.

Nevin



Andrew C. Greenberg wrote:

>
> On Monday, November 11, 2002, at 08:38 PM, goran.hultgren at bluefish.se 
> wrote:
>
>> "Andrew C. Greenberg" <werdna at mucow.com> wrote:
>> [SNIP]
>>
>>> I am an IP and Patent lawyer.  After a careful analysis, and extensive
>>> discussions with FSF and RMS on the subject matter, it is my present
>>> view that GPL is unsuitable for use with a monolithic object image
>>> system unless all code of that system is to be GPL'd.  While LGPL can
>>> be made to work for things like plugins, GPL simply is "too viral" to
>>> work in an open community such as ours.
>>
>>
>> Andrew - could you explain what you mean with "can be made to work"?
>
>
> LGPL, as opposed to GPL, is non-viral to calling programs.  It is 
> usable for plugins and attached libraries, particularly if 
> dual-licensed with Squeak-L.  I wouldn't use it to distribute 
> Smalltalk code.
>
>> Reading the above I gather that Andrew also thinks LGPL is a no-no for
>> the image, but could possibly be used for plugins. All this sounds to me
>> that both licenses really should not be used if we can avoid it, is this
>> a correct interpretation Andrew?
>
>
> Yes.  Although I have not given any thought to LGPL Smalltalk code 
> distributed outside the image.   Let me consider this.
>
>
>
>