Re: gtkmm capabilities

[Roel Vanhout <roel riks nl>]

Heh I thought everyone had given up on this discussion ;)


Ole Laursen wrote:
> Yeah, but you are sort of assuming that the guy asking here would only
> want to use a license that forbids reverse engineering.

Well I was assuming that he wanted to use a 'standard' commercial 
licence, ie one that does forbid it. I can't speak for the OP of course, 
it's just that I think that most people wouldn't even think about 
putting in a clause about reverse engineering in their licenses.

> > Again, I'm not arguing pro-proprietary software. I prefer Free
> > Software, and I will advice compenies I work for to choose it over
> > proprietary software (when applicable). But that's not how managers
> > and, more importantly, lawyers see it. They see big red 'LIABILITY'
> > warning signs. And in a way, they are right, at least IMO.
> I don't get it. Why liability? What does fair use have to do with
> liability?

The liability in case is that using an LGPL library in a commercial 
product without knowing exactly what the legal consequences of that are 
opens a software publisher up to claims of copyright infringement. I'm 
not even insinuating that any of the current copyright holders to the 
gtkmm code would do that (as long as those publishers would follow what 
those developers consider 'fair use' of the code) but that is only based 
on _trust_ of said developers. While of course in business land, the 
first rule is "trust no one" ;) Especially not in cases like this that 
could cost (a lot of) money.

> But it is always up to a judge, isn't it? If Murray and co. publicly
> state that they believe it to be OK or even write it down with the
> license, then they can hardly claim afterwards that anyone infringed
> their rights.

That is true, and that is what these other projects that I referenced in 
my last mail have done, but as far as I know there is no such license 
amendment for gtkmm. I have not looked for any statements made by any of 
the copyright holders to gtkmm code, so they may have publicly stated 
that static linking is ok. Such (public) statements could be used to 
argue the 'liberal' interpretation of the LGPL in this case. But still, 
_all_ copyright holders would have had to have made such statements, and 
the license amendment would have to have been in the license from before 
any outside copyright holders had their code added to the library, OR 
all the copyright holders would have to agree with the license change 
(preferbly in writing).

> > Plus, saying that the GPL hadn't been court-tested until last year
> > isn't FUD; it's only FUD if you imply that it wouldn't stand up.
> Yep, and that's what you did. :-)

No, I said the _L_PGL hasn't been court-tested, and I meant in relation 
to the specific issue of statically linking with proprietary apps; and 
in this specific case, I do indeed have doubts on the wording of the 
LGPL. It is not clear enough to be able to say up front what a judge 
will decide in this case. So if I were a lawyer advising a client on 
this issue, I would advise against it, just to be on the safe side.

This would be a nice question for the "Software Freedom Law Center" 
(http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/01/168252).


cheers,

roel