[liblouis-liblouisxml] License issue
- From: "John Gardner" <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 May 2014 13:52:15 -0700
Hello all, in the early life of liblouis we adopted lgpl as our license. I
do not recall any discussion of versions of that license. there were 2 at
the time, and I believe we just adopted #2 because it was the most recent.
In the meantime, LGPL#3 has come out and it is now listed somewhere as the
official license for liblouis. I certainly do not recall any discussion of
making that change. Perhaps others on the list can jog my failing memory.
In any case, I have been advised by people who keep better track of license
terms than I that LGPL#3 is completely unacceptable to companies and
agencies who need to use liblouis with anything that is not open source.
They tell me that LGPL#3, as opposed to LGPL#2 and 2.1, no longer permits an
LGPL-licensed library to be used with software that is not open.
I have just read over the two licenses. The preamble to LGPL#2 contains the
very clear statement: "We use this license for certain libraries in order to
permit linking those libraries into non-free programs."
There is absolutely nothing clear to me in LGPL#3. I have read over that
license and frankly I do not understand one word. I encourage any of you to
try and figure it out. Go to https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html
You can find the LGPL#2 at
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html This is hardly a
paragon of clarity but at least I can figure it out.
Since the big company lawyers are concerned about #3 and not about #2, and
since our purpose is to use LGPL for the following reason stated in the
preamble to LGPL#2 "the Lesser license provides advantages in certain
special circumstances. For example, on rare occasions, there may be a
special need to encourage the widest possible use of a certain library, so
that it becomes a de-facto standard. To achieve this, non-free programs must
be allowed to use the library."
So LGPL#3 has now been hi-jacked away from that purpose of the LGPL#2, and
we cannot use it. Therefore I request that all references to liblouis
license state that we are using LGPL2.
While on the topic of licenses, I also would like for us to clarify the
position we take for Apple and other systems that do not have any mechanism
for permitting users to get the source code - as required by LGPL. In such
cases, we should simply put in instructions as to how that source code can
be obtained. Whether this technically meets LGPL requirements is perhaps not
clear, but it does certainly meet the need. And it permits liblouis to be
used in those closed systems.
John Gardner
there are terms in that license that are unacceptable to many commercial
users. I have been blissfully unaware, but I have been approached by a
major company who wants to use liblouis but is unwilling if we are using
LGPL#3.
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John Gardner
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