[lwip-users] [lwip] RE: Should LwIP go (L)GPL ?

[Bill Knight]

My comments are inserted below.

-Bill Knight

On Fri, 18 Oct 2002 16:23:59 +0200 (SAST), Paul Sheer wrote:

>
>I believe the post below misunderstands the issues
>completely.
>
>Let me explain:
>
>The BSD license does not require one to submit
>work back to the source tree. I myself will not be
>bothered to commit changes that will in effect
>help other companies make better products that
>compete with my product, without requiring
>those companies to contribute anything at all.
>
>The GPL license forces changes to be submitted,
>but also forces any code that links with LwIP
>to also be free. Companies would not be allowed
>to create applications based on LwIP and keep
>those applications secret from their competetors.
>Hence, practically no company would be interested
>in this.
>
>The LGPL also forces changes to be submitted,
>but allows code to be linked that is proprietary.
>So a company can use LwIP and still keep its
>applications secret that link with LwIP.


The problem I see here is that LGPL also requires
that the end-user be able to relink the application
with newer versions of the library as they become 
available.  That is something that just doesn't work
for commercial most embedded applications.


>So the logical choice is the LGPL because it
>promotes developer contribution, while allowing
>companies to create proprietary applications
>around it.
>
>To summarize, it would make little difference
>to any of the developers on this list if LwIP
>increased its restrictiveness to LGPL. But you
>are certainly going to loose a lot of help if you
>keep with the BSD license.
>
>The reason why the BSD license works well
>for other projects is because there is some overriding
>non-commercial motivation for working on the code.
>
>At the moment, I believe that the reason LwIP
>is not progressing is purely because such motivation
>is not there. LwIP needs to switch to the LGPL
>in order to progress as a project.
>
>The Wine project had a similar delemer and resisted
>(L)GPL until companies blatently plagarized their
>work for commercial gain while contributed nothing
>back (as was allowed by their license). They finally
>saw right and recently switched to the GPL (LGPL ?).
>
>This is an important case in point.
>
>I think the only companies that should object to
>the LGPL are those that did not understand what
>it meant exactly. So be it if this is a reason not to
>switch.
>
>-paul



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