http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/et/dd/docs/1991/31991L0250-ET.doc
this document outlines the circumstances under which copyright holders effectively forfeit their copyright and the sections that i wish to draw to your attention are the ones concerning "interfaces" and "interoperability at interfaces". under 91/EC/250, interfaces are exempt from copyright law if the developers of the code and/or hardware will not grant a license for interoperability purposes. even reverse engineering is allowed and catered for - but for interoperation only, not for people to find out trade secrets such as faster implementations. the reason why i am bring this up on debian-legal is because there may come a time when either one open source project approaches another, or a proprietary company approaches an open source project (controlled by debian) and requests a license from the copyright holders in order that their proprietary (or open source project with an incompatible license) project interoperate with that otherwise incompatible project. for example, there may come a time when the debian maintainers of Xfree86 4.3.x request a license for the updated drivers of the incompatible Xfree86 4.4.x from xfree86.org. or there may come a time when a company approaches the samba team and requests a license for their proprietary file browser plugin to interoperate with the Network Neighbourhood (which is presently impossible without shutting down nmbd, which is also equally impossible) now, i am aware that a number of open source projects DELIBERATELY release libraries under the GPL in order to force people to release their code under the GPL, too. where such libraries could be construed to have "interfaces", and where the GPL is used to force a monopoly position, then any company or open source project with an incompatible license is entitled to request a compatible license and if they do not receive one they are entitled to treat the "interface" - i.e. the header files and effectively the entire library - as not being subject to copyright law! in other words, if anyone releases a library under the GPL with the intention of creating a monopoly situation, they forfeit their copyright! so, the reason why i am mentioning all this is so that you will be forewarned, and can put in place a strategy to deal with such a situation. personally, i think it would be extremely sensible to release code, even if it isn't a library but is a binary suite of packages, under the LGPL not the GPL. as you are no doubt aware, the LGPL requires that people making modifications to the package / library release source code for such modifications, but the code _using_ that library has no restrictions or obligations. this is _exactly_ the sort of thing that is compatible with the EU directive on copyright law, whereas the GPL most clearly is not. given that open source projects are becoming significant development projects in their own right (several man-years and in some cases man-decades), and that they will or are already beginning to squeeze out the competition, i forsee circumstances where GPL'd code will hit monopolies investigations. l. -- -- expecting email to be received and understood is a bit like picking up the telephone and immediately dialing without checking for a dial-tone; speaking immediately without listening for either an answer or ring-tone; hanging up immediately and believing that you have actually started a conversation. -- <a href="http://lkcl.net";> lkcl.net </a> <br /> <a href="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]"> [EMAIL PROTECTED] </a> <br />
