Mike McCarty wrote:
> No, not even MicroSoft says that you can't call open() without
> making your code theirs. In fact, no one does that except GPL.
>
> (I'm not claiming that open() is GPL, it might be LGPL, but
Your complaints in the parent post do in fact seem to rely on open()
being in a GPL'd library: but Standard C library open() is in glibc
which is LGPL.
As I posted earlier, there is quite a large number of core libs which
are LGPL, aside from glibc, and so allow a proprietary app writer to
include them in his app without forcing the source to be opened.
Please run this:
# rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME} %{LICENSE}\n" | grep LGPL | sort | uniq
and satisfy yourself that there is a pretty rich range of libs available
in LGPL on Fedora so that you can at least complain accurately about the
GPL in your reply, without needing immediately disprovable strawmen like
open().
Then to repeat Erwin's point, why should the people who did the work to
create, by choice, a GPL'd library or app, have made another choice to
facilitate your locking up a proprietary app based on or deriving from
it? That is the implication of all this: "If only it was BSD licensed I
could do an Apple". The library creators did the work -- they chose the
license. If you don't feel able to use their work on their terms then
you are free to try to find a proprietary alternative (SCO will probably
sublicense a buttload of old junky Unix libs and apps on extremely
proprietary terms if that's what you really want), or write your own.
But please don't moan about the terrible consequences of the GPL when
this is a deliberate feature wielded by the coders that chose the
license, it just sounds like you want something for nothing.
> even LGPL is so confusing to read that I'm not sure what
> it means, exactly, and it certainly has some scary language.)
Please read what you wrote above and reconsider if you should be
lecturing the list on this.
-Andy
Attachment:
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
