On Sat, May 06, 2000 at 07:33:49PM +0100, James Sutherland wrote:
> On Sat, 6 May 2000, Bill Anderson wrote:
> > James Sutherland wrote:
> > > On Fri, 5 May 2000, Richard Stallman wrote:
> > > third party some rights to this person's source. Using GPL software as a
> > > user grants me rights; using it as a programmer removes them.
> >
> > I don't see how you make this conclusion. The programmer and the user
> > have exactly the same rights with a GPL program. I see no distinctions
> > in the GPL that say programmers are nay different than users.
>
> The difference arises when I write software which interacts with that GPL
> program, and is thus forced to become GPL software itself.
Enters the Library General Public License (LGPL), which allows you to
call a LGPL'ed library's functions from your own code and still put your
program under any license you want, as long as it does not directly
contain the library's code. Your program is not a derivative work of the
library then.
If your program interacts with a GPL'ed program via some communications
channel, it is not a derivative work either, thus not affecting your
choice of licenses.
If you use a GPL'ed program to compile/generate your program (or data),
it is not a derivative work either, ...
AFAIK you get the same results in the Microsoft model (i.e. the above
is still correct if you replace "[L]GPL" with "applicable Microsoft
license" (I never knew what they call this license -- the EULA is only
for end users...).
Is there any point left where you think the GNU model is more
restrictive than any proprietary model?
(Of course, some libraries come with the GPL, not the LGPL. I suppose
often this is just a misunderstanding. But in the cases where this is
on purpose, I suppose your argument is correct. Anyway, this is the
choice of the library's authors. The GNU model prepared a license which
many feel to be more appropriate for libraries, mainly because of the
same concerns you have.)
Cheers,
Olaf Dabrunz.
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