Re: gtkmm capabilities

[Roel Vanhout <roel riks nl>]

Russell Shaw wrote:
> > > > 6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or 
> > > > link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a 
> > > > work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work 
> > > > under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit 
> > > > modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse 
> > > > engineering for debugging such modifications.
> > > > This would be unacceptable for most commercial application that are 
> > > > released nowadays.
> > > It would only be unacceptable to pre-free-source licences.
> > Hmm I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'pre-free-source licences'.
> Licences that were formulated before anyone had thought about using
> open/free source libraries.

In that case, I don't agree with you. There are plenty of people who use 
licenses that were written after the first version of the GPL (or any 
other event that you want to use as starting point for FOSS libraries) 
and who explicitly want to disallow the reverse-engineering of their 
products.

> > > With a distribution of objects, no reverse engineering is needed,
> > > because only the LGPL libraries need to accessible to the user,
> > > who can get the source for them anyway.
> > It's irrelevant whether or not it's needed, the LGPL requires it so 
> > any programs that use gtkmm (or any other LGPL library for that 
> > matter) will have to allow it in their license.
> But why can't the licence allow re-engineering of the LGPL objects
> and exclude any modification of the closed-source object?

It could, but the LGPL doesn't. To cite again from section 6 of the LGPL:

"...and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that 
the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and 
reverse engineering for debugging such modifications."

It is important to note here that 'the work' is the whole application, 
as it is delivered to the customer, eg in the Windows world the .exe 
file, with the library statically linked in. So to use the LGPL library, 
you have to license your application so that it allows modification not 
only of the library but also of the parts of which the source is closed. 
Again, the LGPL is a bit ambiguous here.

> > > If any commercial app is going to be done with LGPL static libs, the
> > > licence should be modified for that. There's no law against modifying
> > > your licence to allow users to upgrade and relink the LGPL objects.
> > No, of course there is no law against that, and neither should there 
> > be. What I'm saying is that you cannot use a standard, tested, 
> > commercial license for any product that uses LGPL products, which is 
> > not only costly (you'd have to have a lawyer tailor a license to your 
> > application) but also a business risk. Costs that will make the 3000$ 
> > (which was the original point) pale in comparison.
> The cost of drafting a few new words for an existing licence on
> a product that is sold by the hundreds or thousands would be pretty
> insignificant i think;)

You cannot just tack a few words onto a license for a fundamental thing 
such as this. A license (as well as a contract) has to be written from 
the ground up with a specific goal in mind, and all parts have to work 
towards that goal. It is very hard to write a license that will cover 
all your intended purposes, that cannot just be done by crossing out 
some sentences here and there and writing in some words.
Besides, it's not just the cost for the lawyer that writes the license, 
it's also in the risk that you take by moving into legally undiscovered 
territory.

cheers,

roel