🚀 go-pugleaf

coleman@redwood.skiles.gatech.edu (Richard Coleman) writes:

...[some stuff deleted]...

>    david> Now, had we installed GNU libc (glibc) and linked with
>    david> that, we would have been subject to the LGPL that glibc is
>    david> distributed under.

The LGPL says little about the program that is incorporating the
library in question, simply that the library itself and any
changes to the library source code must be made available to those
who have received the binary.  I just looked it up, and the only
other thing is to give the components necessary to re-link the
binary(ies) in question if they want to change the library source...
again, this could be done as a separate service for a nominal fee,
but it must be done.

>    david> Also, some system are distributed with glibc (or a variant)
>    david> as their C library, and if you hope to distribute
>    david> commercial (read: proprietary) software on such platforms
>    david> you had better be linking dynamically.

Again, why?  If it was the GPL that glibc was under, then I'd agree
that you coultn't do a commercial license on the software...  please
direct me to the sections which say this.  The components necessary
to re-link thing mentioned above could be implemented as dynamic
linking, but it needn't be.

>I consider this unfortunate.  I believe this will prevent a lot of
>businesses from using Linux that otherwise would.  This is a shame
>since Linux is such a nice system.  Also, all the bug reports and
>fixes that these businesses would generate will not happen.

There are several businesses selling commercial applications on Linux...
the main thing preventing businesses from getting into free OS's and
free software in general is unfamiliarity, from my experience.  Where
I work, I have demonstrated the usefulness of FreeBSD, for example, and
we're using it for our Internet gateway machine, and possibly more
in the future.  There was a quite serious suggestion to move our
product line to Linux.  If we hadn't had so much Microsoft legacy
code, it would have been a possibility.

>I believe the LGPL is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to
>widespread useage of Linux (and eventually the Hurd).

I do not wish to give offense, but while this may be accurate,
I think it isn't because they're thinking about the reasons clearly,
IMHO it appears to be more of a knee-jerk response to the possibility
of having to "give their code away".

Under the LGPL, you can write proprietary code if you wish, there are
simply some conditions that you must adhere to, to allow your users
flexibility.

I mentioned this in another message, but one of the points of this is
to ensure that the users aren't trapped into getting everthing from
one place.  I've suffered this many times, at work as well as my
programming at home.  At home, I have a perfectly nice machine, that
if I had the source code to the OS or X-server, I (and others) could
keep it alive and useful a lot longer...  as it is, it is pretty
much a dead machine, since I can't fix or enhance anything that this
big company decided to not support any longer.

Frankly, that will *always* happen, since any particular business
is there to make money, they'll either drop something or otherwise
compromise on something you need sooner or later, since the probability
is that your interests and theirs don't precisely coincide.

Erich Boleyn

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Erich Stefan Boleyn                \___  E-mail (preferred):  <erich@uruk.org>
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