LGPL doesn't help with app stores, anyway. [LWN.net]

LGPL doesn't help with app stores, anyway.

Posted Nov 23, 2012 18:38 UTC (Fri) by DonDiego (guest, #24141)
In reply to: LGPL doesn't help with app stores, anyway. by bkuhn
Parent article: Relicensing VLC from GPL to LGPL

This was not about app stores, much less Apple ones, why do you and others keep assuming that it was? Note that I'm not pulling this statement out of thin air, I talk to the VLC people regularly.

LGPL doesn't help with app stores, anyway.

Posted Nov 24, 2012 0:25 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (2 responses)

This was not about app stores, much less Apple ones, why do you and others keep assuming that it was? Note that I'm not pulling this statement out of thin air, I talk to the VLC people regularly.

It sounds like this is a great opportunity for you to say what this undertaking is about. The only example the article came up with of the purposes of the relicensing has to do with an Apple application store, which you have reason to know is false; do you accordingly know what the real reasons are?

LGPL doesn't help with app stores, anyway.

Posted Nov 24, 2012 14:01 UTC (Sat) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

From the article:

> Other modules, including scripting and visualization, will remain GPL-licensed at least for the time being, because they do not impede the ability of third-party developers to write non-GPL playback applications, which was the leading use-case motivating the change.

LGPL doesn't help with app stores, anyway.

Posted Nov 25, 2012 12:27 UTC (Sun) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link]

There you go. While I have to admit that the blog entries do not prominently talk about the reasons why the relicensing was done, it's not like there is no statement at all in that direction.

Note that the FOSS alternatives to the VLC backend/plumbing code are all LGPL or even more liberally licensed. This reminds me more of the decision to make glibc LGPL rather than GPL - plenty of alternative libc implementations exist. Thus for third-party devs there is no incentive to use the more restrictively licensed library.

LGPL doesn't help with app stores, anyway.

Posted Nov 24, 2012 0:50 UTC (Sat) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]

> This was not about app stores, much less Apple ones, why do you and others keep assuming that it was? Note that I'm not pulling this statement out of thin air, I talk to the VLC people regularly.

It's purely speculation. All the media outlets I've seen have clearly said "we don't know why, but this kinda makes sense, and it hasn't been denied".