On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Patrik Stridvall wrote:
Does it nessararily follow that you wish to accept any means to achieve this? Including, say, to be really extreme: "Nuke the middle east, then it will be peace there" and after enough nukes it probably WILL be peace, so it would be entire in line with peace on earth. Right?
Patrik, if you think licensing software under the LGPL is equivalent to nuking the middle east out of existence, you need to take a _deep_ breath, drink some cold water, and stay away from those pills.
Since we're here, this is the type of attitude that really destroys the credibility of much of your arguments.
It was purposely extreme to illustrate that you can fullfill the spirit of something good with very bad results.
There are many thing that are important in the world not just one, so it was just a reaction of your persistance that the spirit of something is the only thing that matters.
I mean, exagerations of the form: 'LGPL gives you nothing, it's a pile of crap' despite the enormous effort put in it by various lawyers and law professors from reputable universities, will not buy you many friends. Do you really think that the entire law establishment in the US has all gone mad and can't see the 'Gapping Hole' in the LGPL, and you were the chosen one to see it?
I'm sure they all have worked very hard, however as in the extreme example above, all means to achieve something is not nessarily good, if seen as a whole.
The meant this time is the doctrine of derived work, which since it is one of the few means they got it was naturely the choice.
However, a to strong doctrine of derived work, is not good from other points of views so it will be entirely possibly that the courts will not rule in their favour.
On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Patrik Stridvall wrote:
There are many thing that are important in the world not just one, so it was just a reaction of your persistance that the spirit of something is the only thing that matters.
I focused on the spirit to put some sense in the discussion, go get to the point where we agree to disagree, but you don't seem to want that.
In computers we have interfaces and implementations. It's healthy to separate the two. In our case, the interface is the spirit of the LGPL, while the implementation is the LGPL itself.
If there are 'Gapping Holes' anywhere, they are in your arguments. You say you agree with the interface, but you disagree violently with the implementation. On the other hand, when I ask you for a different implementation, you can't it can not be done. Patrik, you can not agree with an unimplementable interface, for crying out loud!!! You have to make up your mind and choose!
-- Dimi.
P.S. Note however, that your claim of 'implemenetable' is shakey at best. It has been implemented (see the LGPL), and until courts rule on it, _it_is_implemented_, so claiming otherwise is plain silly.
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Dimitrie O. Paun -
Patrik Stridvall