Re: [Texmacs-dev] Double licensing or exceptional clauses

[David Allouche]

On Sat, Jul 27, 2002 at 05:45:55PM +0200, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> > The GPL already authorize linking against proprietary system
> > libraries. I think that precisely addresses the needs of making the
> > software work on a give platform. Using proprietary non-system
> > libraries like Qt is *not* a requirement to use win32.
> 
> No, but if we want to do it, then we are stuck. I have a broader
> interpretation of "getting it to run" on another OS than the FSF:
> I want to see graphical toolkits as part of the system libraries.
> For most modern applications, involving a GUI frontend,
> this is a reasonable broadening.

Strictly speaking, the GPL needs no broadening since on any
half-decent system the toolkit is part of the system libraries. In
win32 we *can* use the MFC with GPL licensed code, and thus have
complete access to the standard GUI toolkit.

The fact that we do not want to use the MFC because it sucks so much
is another problem, but I do not think it is enough a reason to change
license, especially since there may be libraries which provide the
features we need, are less painful to use than the MFC, and are free
as in speech.

Yet, it may be useful to be able to link TeXmacs with non-free code,
especially if we want to have closer ties with real businesses. But we
have to be very careful not to leave any loophole which would allow
contributions not to be published and put back in GPL'd software.
 
But, once again, basic intellectual property law gives us that.

I think I begin to understand what you want to do... LGPL is nice
because it would allow anyone to link with non-free software (albeit
only through dynamic linking), so it would not require us to set any
exception, but it is bad because I may cause "evil" proprietary
software developpers to make improvement to TeXmacs without releasing
them back to the public (and to us).

So you would like to restrict this ability only to the copyright
holders of TeXmacs. Essentially, TeXmacs would be released to the
public as GPL'd code, but a single entity would have the right to use
it as LGPL'd code. Right?

-- 

                             -- David --