OK, let me have a go at this. Please excuse me for redundantly rewording the whole thing. I believe the particular wording will help convey my personal impression and point of view better, and will allow the reader to detect any errors in my thinking and correct me better.
Traditionally, Linux and most of its userspace is GPL. Some people like that. You could say it was absolutely vital in emergence of Linux as a viable system.
This wasn't perfect for business, so successively, license solutions which allowed system libraries to be used by commercial applications were found, and these libraries were licensed accordingly. Like GPL with exceptions, and then LGPL.
As number of commercial interests grew, so did the number of components licensed under LGPL. There have also been efforts to reduce binary coupling between systems, by using IPC/RPC protocols instead of calling foreign code directly. This was made to mitigate a particular kind dependency hell where one program at any particular version depends on the source of another program or component at some particular version. This makes updates and crossgrades easier, and allows software to evolve with less dependence on the underlying system. This benefits commercial software more than it benefits open-source software, though i believe it is a technical merit at least as much as it is a political one.
So far so good, or so bad, depending on your camp and bias.
And yet all of this is a red herring. Once something is LGPLed or GPLed, nobody can ever take it away from you, your freedom to use and modify this software. If you want to release your software as GPL, what prevents you from doing so?
Nothing technically, but the following limits its usefulness. RPC allows proprietary software to leverage the functionality of your GPL software, which might go against your intent, as RPC becomes the de facto interface of increasing number of components...
But have you considered that RPC has been used by proprietary software for a long time? Or even applications signed with GPL incompatible open source license like Apache. They just bundle their own RPC host, written in a GPL compatible license.
Considering this workaround, it pays to reconsider whether GPL is adequate towards heavily componentized (as opposed to mostly-monolithic) software in the first place. It might be that the whole linkage wording is a nonsensical idea, because it takes a completely arbitrary and very narrow view of the software composition and component reuse.
Yet finally, why would you sacrifice a technical merit just to attempt, in vain, to satisfy your political one?
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OK, let me have a go at this. Please excuse me for redundantly rewording the whole thing. I believe the particular wording will help convey my personal impression and point of view better, and will allow the reader to detect any errors in my thinking and correct me better.
Traditionally, Linux and most of its userspace is GPL. Some people like that. You could say it was absolutely vital in emergence of Linux as a viable system.
This wasn't perfect for business, so successively, license solutions which allowed system libraries to be used by commercial applications were found, and these libraries were licensed accordingly. Like GPL with exceptions, and then LGPL.
As number of commercial interests grew, so did the number of components licensed under LGPL. There have also been efforts to reduce binary coupling between systems, by using IPC/RPC protocols instead of calling foreign code directly. This was made to mitigate a particular kind dependency hell where one program at any particular version depends on the source of another program or component at some particular version. This makes updates and crossgrades easier, and allows software to evolve with less dependence on the underlying system. This benefits commercial software more than it benefits open-source software, though i believe it is a technical merit at least as much as it is a political one.
So far so good, or so bad, depending on your camp and bias.
And yet all of this is a red herring. Once something is LGPLed or GPLed, nobody can ever take it away from you, your freedom to use and modify this software. If you want to release your software as GPL, what prevents you from doing so?
Nothing technically, but the following limits its usefulness. RPC allows proprietary software to leverage the functionality of your GPL software, which might go against your intent, as RPC becomes the de facto interface of increasing number of components...
But have you considered that RPC has been used by proprietary software for a long time? Or even applications signed with GPL incompatible open source license like Apache. They just bundle their own RPC host, written in a GPL compatible license.
Considering this workaround, it pays to reconsider whether GPL is adequate towards heavily componentized (as opposed to mostly-monolithic) software in the first place. It might be that the whole linkage wording is a nonsensical idea, because it takes a completely arbitrary and very narrow view of the software composition and component reuse.
Yet finally, why would you sacrifice a technical merit just to attempt, in vain, to satisfy your political one?