Re: bitkeeper

Steven Roberts (strobert@ata-sd.com)
Wed, 07 Oct 1998 13:46:02 -0800


"Henning P. Schmiedehausen" wrote:
> dlang@diginsite.com (David Lang) writes:
>
> >correct me if I am wrong about the QT licence, but isn't it still free,
> >they just refuse to put the GPL on it to give it's being free more power
> >then their statement " we are going to continue to have this free"
>
> Putting the GPL on it actually removes freedom from it.
>
> At least to me it would mean that I can no longer use qt to link to my
> commercial programs (Linking commercial code to GPL code means that
> the commercial code is put under GPL).
>
> LGPL would be acceptable but not GPL. This is a _fundamental_
> difference.
>
> Kind regards
> Henning

Of course the LGPL has a big problem in itself (at least last time I
looked, which was a year ago). The problem is with the using clauses.
They are unclear on one area of code I do a lot of.

I code in C++. As such I have a lot on inline functions (for speed/code
size) defined in header files. So if I have a library that consists of
all inline code (say a C++ template based library). An application
program that uses it would be compiling the code, not just using it.

Maybe this issue has been cleared up in a revision of the LGPL that I
haven't seen yet, and if so please correct me. I am developing a suite
of C++ libraries for linux/Win32 that I currently have a fairly open
license on. I looked into using the LGPL for it, but I scared enough
bussiness lawyers when I showed them the LGPL that I decided against it.

I can't make the applications themselves GPL because various bosses
would shoot me if I made the code that contained nifty little secret
algos public.

Regards,
Steven Roberts

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/