Re: [JDEV] [Web Site 1.0]

[qbradley@csc.UVic.CA]

On Thu, 4 Feb 1999, Tue Wennerberg wrote:

> We might want to give the Client Lib a special "reference implementation"
> licence, allowing proprietary software to be built upon it. I'm not sure.
> The rest could be GPL'ed, or something, as long as it's Open Source [tm].

That is what the LGPL is for, I believe.  When someone gets around to
writing a client library, we will see what license they use I suppose.

There was recently an article on slashdot.org where RMS suggested LGPL
should be "Lesser GPL" instead of "Library GPL", but in any case, the
decision rests with the author of the client library.

This brings up a sticky point perhaps someone could help me understand.  I
was working with an artist on an interface for a Jabber client.  In my
opinion it looks very cool, and operates very effectively.  However, it
makes use of a lot of original art created by the artist.  Artists are
an order of magnitude more concerned about IP issues than comptuer
scientists.  I've looked through the GPL and I'm not sure it would apply
well to the art.  Either the art would fall under the category of
something that stands alone, in which case it would not be GPL when
seperated from the code, or perhaps not.  In any case, if a client library
was LGPL, I could use it while keeping other parts of the program, such as
the artwork, "proprietary".  

If I can't come up with a decent solution, my other options are just using
a traditional interface (Will we be stuck with last decades GUI concepts
forever?!) because the artist won't risk losing his reputation by letting
go of control of his art, or to write a completely proprietary client,
which would be boring and useless, IMHO.

Any thoughts?

Quetzalcoatl Bradley
qbradley@csc.uvic.ca