Exception statements [LWN.net]

Exception statements

Posted Mar 18, 2004 15:25 UTC (Thu) by mmutz (subscriber, #5642)
In reply to: Exception statements by pivot
Parent article: The GPL and library code

> It's not a serious issue of the GPL, it's an issue with those that
> choose to license the software under the GPL. Eg. Trolltech might have
> licensed Qt under the LPGL, avoiding the scenario you describe, but they
> chosed not to.

For obvious reasons. The MySQL/TrollTech business model won't work with LGPL'ed libraries, of course.

The problems I described are problems with the GPL, exactly because they force a certain type of software to be licensed under the Lesser GPL to be more widely available to end users (just as you suggest). But the Lesser GPL was created to allow for wider dissemination of Free Software among developers (there is no point in releasing an application, as opposed to libraries, under the GPL).

If TrollTech needs to distribute Qt under the Lesser GPL, so that GPL'ed software can run under Windows, then that is a problem with the GPL, no?

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Exception statements

Posted Mar 18, 2004 19:03 UTC (Thu) by stevenj (subscriber, #421) [Link]

If TrollTech needs to distribute Qt under the Lesser GPL, so that GPL'ed software can run under Windows, then that is a problem with the GPL, no?

Nope, that is the design of the GPL: if you put your code under the GPL, it is precisely in order to prevent it from being combined with proprietary code (e.g. Qt for Windows).

This is entirely separate from the MySQL issue, which was combining with incompatibly-licensed free-software code. Their solution, which seems like a kind of GPL + pseudo-LGPL-for-free-software-only, is interesting...the main question is whether it opens up some loophole or other problem that is not immediately obvious. I'd like to see the FSF's legal counsel comment on it for this reason.