Slashdot pointed me to this article by Bruce Parens aimed at clearing some of the air around using GPL and LGPL and commercially licensed product on the same device. Of course, the summary of the article is "Check with your lawyer" as it should be. But I hope it alleviates fears over the FSF licenses that I know people have.
I especially like the description of the motivation that open source developers use to license their software. BSD is a "gift" software license. The developer is giving it to you as a gift, do with it as you wish, just give him some of the credit. LGPL is "non-gift". And I get it. They essentially don't want you using their stuff for free unless you help with it. And then you have GPL, which falls into the category that they just don't want you using their stuff for free, unless you're doing your stuff for free too. This categorization puts a little bit of a human face on it, and I appreciate that.
This also made me think about our situation at Eclipse. It's very difficult to get third party software approved at Eclipse. I'd love to be able to host the GNU tool chain binaries along with the CDT to help new developers get started. Now, I am not a lawyer, but Bruce's article doesn't mention restrictions on distributing binaries, only the run-time requirements. Maybe I'm missing something there, and maybe lawyers are reading more into the license than what I see. So be it, they're professionally responsible for their opinions, I tend not to be.
But there is no mistaking it. Despite whatever legal issues surround open source software, it's popularity can't be denied, especially in the embedded world.
Hey Doug, nice post.
ReplyDeleteI ran into some issues with licensing incompatibilities the other day and was quite frustrated.
I can understand that the creators have invested a considerable amount of time and effort into their projects and want to protect them from being exploited by third parties, but it makes it really hard for developers to integrate and combine certain libraries or projects. Not only do you have to make sure their runtime systems work together (technical compatibility), but their licenses have to mesh as well (license compatibility).
The thing is: for software developers the technical issues are easy to spot and we can fix them, writing adapters and the like. And you know when you have been successful - everything compiles and runs. With license issues the line is not so clearly drawn, and most of us do not have a degree in law.
So "free" software definitely has a price: the uncertainty whether your combination of projects is even legal, the cost of getting a lawyer involved to make sure, and last not least the hidden cost of some projects never seeing the light of day because of these hurdles.
Again, I can see the argument of protecting your effort, I just wish their was a better way.
Doug,LGPL is a gift license in some sense. You can do whatever you want with the code, unless you improve (or modify) it. Then, you have to share those changes. But otherwise it's as do-what-you-want as anything else, and can be used in privative software.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with distributing LGPL from Eclipse isn't that this would violate license terms and hence represent a legal problem. The problem is that this "taints" what's being distributed by Eclipse with a dependency on a license whose terms are less friendly to commercial consumers. Of course we all know that a very large portion of the work being done at Eclipse is funded by exactly those consumers, some of whom have legions of exceedingly conservative lawyers.
ReplyDeleteGlad you brought that up Ed. The assumption is that these LGPL bits are intended for commercial users. But then that is what Eclipse is all about isn't it. It's not about regular Joe end users.
ReplyDeleteWe've had this debate many times and I'd wish someone would make it clear to the community. If you aren't a commercial vendor, go away. Which would be sad and would anger a lot of people, but reflects the reality that this is.
I don't agree that Eclipse is exclusively about commercial users verses regular end users, but it's important to keep in mind how most of the work at Eclipse is funded, i.e., by the commercial users, and that this affects the decision making process. In any case, I don't see how the rejection of a license translates into a rejection of all regular users. Life's just not that black and white...
ReplyDeleteNeither is the conclusion that commercial vendors hate GPL. Our Wind River product is a massive collection of GPL and EPL and commercial, all on the same DVD, which makes Eclipse more restrictive than commercial in this case. Weird...
ReplyDeleteI tend to refrain from using words like "hate." I simply suggested that LGPL is less commercially friendly than EPL and that some commercial consumers have very conservative lawyers who make a very big issue out of that. That's quite a bit less extreme than concluding that all commercial consumers hate LGPL.
ReplyDeleteBeing on the IP Advisory Committee of the Eclipse Board, I'm well aware of Wind River's position on this issue; I'm simply not at liberty to discuss board confidential deliberations and most certainly not anyone's specific position. Suffice to say that I am extremely sensitive to the issue you raise. I will continue to work hard to make events unfold such that Wascana could be hosted at Eclipse.
Typo: "it's popularity" --> "its popularity"
ReplyDeleteThanks Ed! I do hope you guys are successful. For the good of the greater Eclipse community.
ReplyDeleteI am looking for a Free tool equivalent to 'Source Insight' in Windows environment.
ReplyDeleteCan Eclipse CDT be used for Browsing of Files (C Language) alone for Free ?
Is it a complete freely available C and C++ development environments ?
Thx in advans,
Karthik Balaguru
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ReplyDeletehttp://feboook.blogspot.com