gpgme license

[Werner Koch]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 06:15:17 -0400, Niels Provos said:

> Doesn't that contradict your next statement that you switched the
> license of gcrypt?  Or do we have to differentiate between FSF
> (Stallman) and the GNU project (non-only Stallman) here?

No, there are reasons why the LGPL makes sense for some pieces of
software.  The thing we have to take into account is to see whether it
helps to spread the use of copyleft protected software.  For Libgcrypt
this is clear, there are a lot of free crypto libraries around and
there is incentive to prefer Libgcrypt, so we could just make it LGPL
and thus help a couple of other projects with a GPL incompatible
license (e.g. MPL).  GNUTLS is similar and thus the basic TLS
functionality is under the LGPL, howeer the more advanced features are
extras under the GPL.

GPGME is more or less unique and thus I don't see the point to makle
it LGPLed.  See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html.

And yes, I think it is good to protect the freedom with the minimal
restrictions the GPL lays on the software.  Iwish we won't need to,
though.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner