Re: [liblo] Fwd: liblo licensing

Glad to be getting some more feedback on this topic, thanks..

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Sebastien Bourdeauducq
<seb...@mi...> wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-02-18 at 13:42 +0000, Nicholas J Humfrey wrote:
>> Generally I don't mind if liblo is used in closed-source projects as
>> long as any changes or improvements to liblo are contributed back to
>> the project. Is there a suggested a license that achieves that?
>
> LGPL does.
>
> That being said, I wouldn't mind if liblo was GPL.

It was previously.  That's the thing.. switching to LGPL actually was
the _compromise_ for us, because we were receiving many requests to
use liblo in commercial products.  I know that LGPL is not exactly
encouraged by the FSF, but it was the closest thing I could find to a
license that enforces GPL-style values (i.e. remains modifiable by the
user, requires changes be contributed back) but allows usage in
closed-source applications.

I know that the liblo community considers software freedom important;
in matters like these, it's good to remember that it is indeed more
important than getting more users at any cost---besides, it's not like
there aren't other options for sending and receiving OSC.  I'd rather
not see modified versions of liblo out there where I don't know what
changes have been made.

If people have a harder time using other solutions, it's not really
our problem.  The OSC spec is extremely well documented, so I don't
see why anyone would depend so heavily on a single implementation.  If
they like liblo enough, perhaps they should consider using the GPL for
their product.  That's the whole idea of having a healthy free
software ecosystem.

Well, that's how I see it anyways.

> I have personally
> taken the GPL principles to the next level and I'm building a single
> board computer for video synthesis that is totally open source down to
> the processor hardware design. It runs liblo, with some modifications
> (strip out the auto**** "portable build system" and abstract the socket
> code that did not play well with the RTEMS network stack). See
> www.milkymist.org

That is awesome.  :)

Steve