gnupic: GNU LIB for PIC
Subject:
Re: GNU LIB for PIC
From:
####@####.#### (Rogier Wolff)
Date:
13 Jul 2002 10:29:33 -0000
Message-Id: <200207131016.MAA22607@cave.bitwizard.nl>
Bas Wijnen wrote:
> The idea sounds good, but if I were you, I would read some more about
> licensing, especially LGPL vs GPL:
> http://www.fsf.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html. The free software
> foundation explicitly states, that usually the GPL is better, also for
> libraries.
> The idea of LGPL is that the restriction the GPL poses, namely
> that no non-GPL'd code may link to it, is not in the interest of creating
> a world where everybody uses free software. This is true for libc, since
> people will use a different lib with such a license. If you build
> something original, they cannot since there is no other lib doing the same
> thing. In that case, the GPL is more approriate, because people may
> license their software as free (GPL) software in order to use the lib.
Sure, "free software" is good. However, there are people earning money
writing software. Some of that software needs to remain "closed" in
order to prevent others from copying the effort put in, without paying
for it.
Of course, an open source spreadsheet will benefit from contributions
from others. But if you write software for PIC chips the companies
paying for that will not want their competitor to be able to pull the
code off the net and get the "hard part" for free.
Now if someone were to write some supporting functions (RS232 in/out,
16 bit multiply, string handling, things like that) and release those
as LGPL, then others can improve on the non application specific
things, and make the world a better place. But they can still "hide"
important trade secrets in their own code and embed that together with
the library.
If Antonio were to release his library under GPL, some company will
use it and refuse to release sourcecode. Going to court about this is
going to just upset that company and make sure that they will never
ever again use open source.... Not good publicity. Not good.
Roger.
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