[Gpe-list] Use of LGPL

[Sir Maniac]

The GNU philosophy of the LGPL is pretty clear:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html

  "There are reasons that can make it better to use the Library GPL in certain
cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily
available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that
case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is
better to use the Library GPL for that library."

 "...when a library provides a significant unique capability, like GNU
Readline, that's a horse of a different color. ... Releasing it under the GPL
and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost.

   IMO, GPE needs the extra popularity that can be gained by allowing
commercial developers to use the GPE environment.  One of the reasons cited on
why the zaurus wasn't very successful, was the commercial license developers
paid for the use of Qt/e, while Palm and WinCE have always had no licensing (As
far as I know).

   Where the developer's are, so are the PDA/Phone manufacturers.  When the
manufacturers get involved, major contributions can probably be had.  With
those contributions we can leverage the GPL to help compete further with
commercial distributions.

Ryan


 
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