As you say, "Unfortunately, right or wrong, you chose LGPL 2.1 and it's a requirement of that license." Amen. We made a mistake that is nearly impossible to undo at this point. My question was simply whether we are in danger if we go ahead and allow liblouis on iOS. This is not very clear. John G -----Original Message----- From: liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Teh Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 5:54 PM To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: License issue On 16/05/2014 9:34 AM, John Gardner wrote: > GPL was originally fairly ambiguous itself, enough that I had thought GPL > would be okay. GPL would require that any application using liblouis were also GPL. That part isn't ambiguous at all. > iOS is not the reason we must revert to version 2 or 2.1. No major company > will allow liblouis to be used with their software on any platform if we use > LGPL3. Your statement is pretty broad. "no major company" suggests that you have evidence from a huge number of "major companies" (not just one or two) that LGPL 3 is a major problem as compared with LGPL 2.1. Your statement that LGPL 3 software can't be used with proprietary applications is incorrect. Otherwise, LGPL 3 and GPL 3 would be identical, which they aren't. My guess is that the issue is with the "installation information" requirement of section 6 of the GPL 3 (which also applies to LGPL 3), which requires that a user be able to install a modified version of the library onto their device without restriction and that all required keys, information, etc. are provided to facilitate this. This would certainly be a problem for iOS or any walled garden system. > I personally would like to see liblouis on iOS. I can not really understand > how anybody could be injured by inability to change it and still use it on > iOS. Just to give one example that immediately springs to mind, perhaps someone discovers a bug or wants to make an enhancement and the app vendor won't update their copy of the library. > Is it better not to have it on iOS or to be denied a toy that seems to be > required by the license? Whether it's a toy is subjective. Unfortunately, right or wrong, you chose LGPL 2.1 and it's a requirement of that license. Jamie -- James Teh Executive Director, NV Access Limited Ph +61 7 3149 3306 www.nvaccess.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess Twitter: @NVAccess SIP: jamie@xxxxxxxxxxxx For a description of the software, to download it and links to project pages go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com For a description of the software, to download it and links to project pages go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com