[Pipet Devel] PyORBit (was: CORBA documentation)

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Gary Van Domselaar wrote:
> 
> ORBithon sounds cooler than pyorbit, but sounds more like a dance-music
> marathon than python-orbit bindings.

Exactly.  Or the name of a theater that would hold dance performances :-)

> I believe LGPL now stands for the GNU Lesser Public License.  From
> http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
> 
> <snip>
> [This is the first released version of the Lesser GPL.  It also counts
>  as the successor of the GNU Library Public License, version 2, hence
>  the version number 2.1.]
> </snip>

That's right.  The name change is for 2 reasons: (1) Richard Stallman wants
developers to migrate from the LGPL to the regular GPL, and so the word 'lesser'
is used in a derogatory way to discourage use (I'm serious; I did some reading
about this).  The license even has a clause to allow license change ONLY TO THE
GPL.  (2) "It's not just for libraries anymore."

The LGPL serves an attractive purpose for many developers: Binary-only software
can link to LGPL-licensed software by the terms of the LGPL.  This is not the
case with the GPL.  But Stallman would rather not encourage binary-only software
in any way, and so he is backstepping on the LGPL.  However, if commercial
acceptance is important (as with large libraries like GTK+ and GNOME, which are
LGPL'd), then so is the availability of the 'lesser' version of the GPL. 
Otherwise, IMO, developers might go with a BSD-type license for libraries.

Loci is LGPL'd.


Cheers.
Jeff
-- 
                         +----------------------------+
                         |        J.W. Bizzaro        |
                         |  jeff at bioinformatics.org   |
                         |                            |
                         |        THE OPEN LAB        |
                         | Open Source Bioinformatics |
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                         | http://bioinformatics.org/ |
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