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Re: Should LGPL-3.0 be an exception rather than a main license?

Philip Odence
 

I’m with my friend David on this…and with my friend Ralph:


“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has
simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on
the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what
to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you
said to-day. ― 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' ― Is it so
bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and
Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton,
and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

On 3/26/15, 5:11 PM, "J Lovejoy" <opensource@...> wrote:

That is a really good point about the other lists, David.

(good to hear from you again on this list!!)

Jilayne

On Mar 26, 2015, at 2:36 PM, Wheeler, David A <dwheeler@...> wrote:

J Lovejoy:
GPL-3.0 WITH LGPL-3.0 (this feels a bit odd, but it would be accurate
technically speaking…) [or]
LGPL-3.0
I strongly believe “LGPL-3.0” is the correct answer. "LGPL-3.0" is
much simpler, it's much clearer to non-lawyers, and referring to it as
its own name matches historical practice.

In *practice* the LGPL is practically always referred to as its own
license, not as a tweak to another license. Historically the LGPL was
implemented as a separate license, and the “tweak” is not a small one
either (exceptions are usually small). All other license list systems
(such as Debian and Fedora's) treat it as a separate license, so there
is strong historical precedence to treating it as its own license (if no
other reason than backwards compatibility).

--- David A. Wheeler
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