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Re: LGPL license violation (Neon) on Windows

From: Mark Phippard <markphip_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 18:22:16 -0400

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Greg Hudson <ghudson_at_mit.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-05-08 at 18:00 -0400, Mark Phippard wrote:
>> I do not really want to bog down in semantics as this is likely a
>> smallish change (for the one or two people that understand the Windows
>> build system).
>
> Uh, sure, but from a time allocation perspective, "we have to do this or
> we're violating Neon's license" is very different from "it would be nice
> if we did this." I don't think we're violating the LGPL.

I did not really mean to close off discussion, sorry. So can you
explain why you think we are in compliance, and what it means for
someone that distributes Subversion? For example, Subclipse and
AnkhSVN both distribute Subversion binaries on Windows. In the case
of Subclipse, I use the same binaries that get posted to tigris.

It sounds to me like if Subversion distributed Neon as a DLL, I would
have to do nothing more. If it is statically linked, then what do I
need to do? It sounds like I have to redistribute either all of the
source code that went into the binaries or the object code. And every
other Windows based product would have to do similar? Since Subclipse
installs as an Eclipse plugin via an Eclipse installation mechanism
that pulls from tigris, do I have to make Eclipse plugins for all of
these pieces and have them also available?

>> Is it worth taking up with the foundation's lawyers? Are you aware of
>> any precedent or docs we could point them to?
>
> It's generally not worth talking with lawyers about stuff, so no. I
> can't really provide any references since you haven't defined
> "relicensed commercially." The LGPL is specifically designed to allow a
> work to be used in combination with proprietary software, as long as you
> provide the necessary machinery to empower a user to modify the LGPL
> portions of the work within any binaries you distribute. That might be
> distasteful to a commercial software provider but it's certainly a far
> cry from "the LGPL does not permit that."

I think you are right about it not being worth it, but it sounds like
if it was distributed as a DLL, there would be no issue for a
commercial provider.

-- 
Thanks
Mark Phippard
http://markphip.blogspot.com/
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Received on 2008-05-09 00:22:49 CEST

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