Squeak and LGPL

Joshua Gargus schwa at fastmail.us
Sun Feb 3 20:58:38 UTC 2008


Thank you, Paolo and Diego, for following up with the FSF.

Clearly, the most recent communications with the FSF are positive.   
There is no way to construe them as hostile toward the Squeak  
community; quite the opposite.

Nevertheless, I think that the continuing cautious attitude is  
justified.  As others have said, the letter of the license is what  
will be interpreted in court.  For example, I don't see any basis for  
the claim that the "LGPL has no teeth" (although I can see how the FSF  
might feel that way, compared to the GPL).  "Clean-room engineering"  
is an established practice precisely because courts have ruled that  
viewing copyrighted code and then writing your own version can  
constitute a copyright violation.  I fail to see how the LGPL differs  
from a proprietary license in that respect.

The FSF have a vested interest in marketing their licenses as  
acceptable to as broad an audience as possible.  There is nothing  
wrong with this, but as always the adage "buyer beware" is applicable.

Cheers,
Josh


On Feb 3, 2008, at 10:14 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:

> Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>>>>>>> "Janko" == Janko Mivšek <janko.mivsek at eranova.si> writes:
>> Janko> Randal, please! First, why the heck we as Smalltalkers need  
>> to obey by
>> Janko> the word that damn licenses if even FSF hinted clear enough,  
>> that it
>> Janko> should be treated LGPL by the spirit, that is by intent and  
>> meaning of
>> Janko> the license.
>> Precisely because it's *only* a "hint", and not legally binding.
>> What will matter in court some day is the letter of the license,  
>> not what some
>> random person may "hint" about it indirectly.
>
> This is not a random person volunteering to answer licensing at gnu.org  
> e-mails.  It is the FSF "licensing clerk" that answered me.
>
> I'm impressed (negatively), more than by a protective attitude which  
> I find after all understandable, by the way people manage to read  
> only the downside of what was written.  For example, Laurence wrote:
>
>> What they said was that they "don't have teeth" which allows them
>> to find teeth in the future.
>
> The way I read this is that *unlike some proprietary licenses* the  
> LGPL doesn't have such teeth.  And anyway, the LGPL *as is now*  
> doesn't have teeth, and licensing changes for GPL and LGPL are *not*  
> retroactive. What is now distributed under LGPLv2 or v3 will *never*  
> gain such teeth.
>
> (I said this last point only to clarify a common misunderstanding on  
> the "or any later version" clause used in licensing under the GPL.   
> It is not about the Squeak vs. GNU Smalltalk debate).
>
> Paolo
>
>




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