Re: Responding to your CDDB Inquiries (fwd)

Mike Oliphant (oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk)
Tue, 9 Mar 1999 22:01:49 +0000 (GMT)

On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Greg Stein wrote:

> > This is precisely the kind of situation the LGPL is designed for. We can
> > provide a .so and a .dll, both under the LGPL. Remember that this just
> > applies to the interface code that we provide out of the goodness of our
> > hearts. People who want a stand-alone, proprietary binary are welcome to
> > implement the interface themselves.
>
> I *really* don't think the LGPL will work for us.
>
> I investigated it quite a bit for my mod_dav module. It would require
> that people ship their code as open source or in a linkable form. I
> seriously doubt people want to bother with shipping a linkable form so
> that people can update the LGPL'd library and relink(!).

We're talking dynamic libraries (.so and .dll) here -- no need for
relinking on the user's part. Also, we're talking about interface *code*
not interface *protocol*. If people aren't happy with requiring a .so or a
.dll, they are welocome to write their own parser for the protocol.

> The library(ies) should be under a BSD-ish license to garner the widest
> audience.

Garnering the widest audience is an important goal, but certainly not the
only one.

> > What about trademarks, though?

> As I've mentioned before, I'd vote for CDIN :-)

No doubt.

> > Trademarks are based on first commercial use.

This is the problem. We want to exclude someone from having any commercial
use of a term we invent to apply to a free format.

Mike