[glug-t] Interesting Questions from the meeting.

For those who missed the meeting here are few questions raised during the 
meeting.

1) How do I GPL my program?
To GPL your program you will have to add the following header to all significant
sorce code files.

     ONE LINE TO GIVE THE PROGRAM'S NAME AND A BRIEF IDEA OF WHAT IT DOES.
     Copyright (C) YEAR  NAME OF AUTHOR
     
     This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
     it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
     the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
     (at your option) any later version.
     
     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
     GNU General Public License for more details.
     
     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
     along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
     Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
     Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Information regarding how to contact the author should also be provided.

For more infomation check out the GPL license. At the end of the license there
is a section detailing how to apply the GPL to your program. You will find the
license with any GPLed program. If you have installed gcc do this.

info gcc

Choose the COPYING node.

Go towards the end.

If just GPLing is not enough and you want to make your program a GNU package,
you will have to follow the GNU Coding standards. The GNU Coding standards is
also available as an info document, or from this location
http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html

If you want to get your program a Debian package there's a maintainer's guide
which will give you the information.
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/

2) Why do we need L-GPL?
L-GPL stands for Library GPL. Heres what RMS has got to say about it.

   The GNU C library uses a special kind of copyleft called the GNU
   Library General Public License, which gives permission to link
   proprietary software with the library.  Why make this exception?

   It is not a matter of principle; there is no principle that says
   proprietary software products are entitled to include our code.  (Why
   contribute to a project predicated on refusing to share with us?)
   Using the LGPL for the C library, or for any library, is a matter of
   strategy.

   The C library does a generic job; every proprietary system or compiler
   comes with a C library.  Therefore, to make our C library available
   only to free software would not have given free software any
   advantage--it would only have discouraged use of our library.

   One system is an exception to this: on the GNU system (and this
   includes GNU/Linux), the GNU C library is the only C library.  So the
   distribution terms of the GNU C library determine whether it is
   possible to compile a proprietary program for the GNU system.  There is
   no ethical reason to allow proprietary applications on the GNU system,
   but strategically it seems that disallowing them would do more to
   discourage use of the GNU system than to encourage development of free
   applications.

   That is why using the Library GPL is a good strategy for the C
   library.  For other libraries, the strategic decision needs to be
   considered on a case-by-case basis.  When a library does a special job
   that can help write certain kinds of programs, then releasing it under
   the GPL, limiting it to free programs only, is a way of helping other
   free software developers, giving them an advantage against proprietary
   software.

Non-free* software sucks. - RMS
* 'free' as in freedom.


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