PROPOSAL: licensing guidelines

Daniel Quinlan quinlan at transmeta.com
Wed May 17 08:36:20 PDT 2000


Maurizio De Cecco <maurizio at mandrakesoft.com> writes:

> The standard define the API, while the licence cover the
> implementation, right ?

Yes, but we should not define an API for which there isn't any free
software.

> Should this then translate that the standard should include only
> library APIs for which at least one Open Source that is not GPL
> implementation exists ?

The LGPL is used for most libraries and it meets these guidelines.
The "L" in LGPL used to stand for "library" (now it's "lesser").

Requiring the use of a GPL library would mean that commercial vendors
wouldn't use that part of the standard, which defeats part of the
purpose of having a standard base system.

Dan




More information about the lsb-discuss mailing list