| Bruce Badger 2005-09-21, 3:57 am |
| On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 13:55:10 +0100, Chris Uppal wrote:
> Bruce Badger wrote:
>
> You are thinking of a "program" as a bunch of source code
In fact I was not thinking of that. Good guess, though :-)
I'm thinking of the situation where you ship a packaged piece of software
that can be installed and used.
As with any package, there will be a list of dependencies. Some of
dependencies are met by things you include in the package, some are not.
For example, I have never personally packaged an operating system with any
of my software, but I have always depended upon one.
Let's say I package my Smalltalk software as a .deb Debian package and
include GNU Smalltalk in the list of things it depends upon. To make it
easy I put the package up on an apt source server.
To install my package a potential user would run "apt-get install {my
package name}" and the packaging software will make sure all dependencies
are satisfied, and will then install my software.
The user can now simply start up the software I shipped.
In case I had in mind I would have packaged .st files, much as I would
have shipped .py, .pl or .rb files had I developed the system in Python,
Perl or Ruby. Yes, these are all source files, but that's irrelevant to
the point I was (and am) making.
> I was intending the word to mean "what the user runs".
Yes. Me too.
> So if I deliver an application as a shell script (say) that starts GST
> with a .im file into which my code is already loaded, then that .im file
> will also contain GPLed code. As such I am quite clearly falling under
> the conditions of clause 2(b)
If you insist on shipping an image, I guess that may change things. I
don't know (IANAL). Paulo?
BTW, my shell script would be written in GNU Smalltalk. Wouldn't yours?
:-)
The intentions regarding distributing a GNU Smalltalk application using
..st files are very clear, though. The intent according to the GNU
Smalltalk manual is that it's quite OK to license your code in any way you
see fit - i.e. you will not be bound by the terms of the GPL. And Paulo
has gone out of his way to make that very point in this thread.
> but the bottom line is that I do not trust the LGPL -- it requires too
> much reading and re-reading and its applicability to languages like
> Smalltalk (or Java) is not clear enough for me to feel any confidence.
Well, trust is a very personal thing. You must go with your feelings on
that one.
One reason I rather like the GPL and LGPL is that I get a very large body
of software under the one license (OK, two. But they are mostly the
same). This is much better than the situation where every vendor gives me
yet another large license to read, and sometimes give me a separate
license for each piece of software!
On a duly diligent commercial project, lawyer time for reading all those
software licenses could add up to some serious sums of money.
All the best,
Bruce
> -- chris
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