[Pipet Devel] Licensing issues

[jarl van katwijk]

> If I understood what Richard Stallman had to say on the subject, linking to GPL
> code through CORBA (from closed-source) is legal, because it's a hole in the
> GPL. CORBA didn't existed (or wasn't widely used) when GPL version 2 was
> written. Since future versions of the GPL (remember we can link with any version
> newer that 2 with the current license) may patch the CORBA hole, I say: "if you
> want to be allowed to link with CORBA, release LGPL".

The only place we've this Corba 'linking' problem is with 3th party UI's, isn't it?

If we want people to be 100% free to build UI's we should go for LGPL.


>
> Right now, linking means "static linking" and even the issue about dynamic
> linking isn't clean (let's assume that dynamic linking is also covered).

Linking seems to be a though problem to us I think. Imaging this:

Piper UI -> Piper DL -> '3th party BL' -> PL

What if this 3th party BL registers to our central coordination database, or what
if it screws
to authentication meganism? It can be done very easily if one were to recode some
core
parts of the BL. Like has happend to icq. Clones line gnomeicu 'parasite' upon
mirabilis.
gnapser this to Napster. etc.

I whould therefore see we licence our communication formats (like the XML format,
corba API) very strict!
Something that would allow people to build UI's, link TO Piper (not link Piper INTO
some other app), and
'hook' apps into the PL. I see much chaos wonce parts of piper are to be 'emulated'
by some 3th party.

bye,
jarl