Hi Peter, On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 11:37:32 +0200, Peter Rosin wrote: > On 2018-07-26 09:24, Jean Delvare wrote: > > In 2012, I decided to turn the inlined i2c_smbus_* helper functions > > into a proper library, with the intent to release it under the LGPL, > > as is the common practice for libraries. > > Not everybody agrees that the Lesser GPL is (or should be) common > practice for libraries, so this should perhaps not be stated as > fact? A common practice is not something you get to agree with or disagree with. It's something which you just see happen. Arbitrarily looking at the 1179 library packages installed on my own system, I see 543 released under the LGPL and 238 released under the GPL. I admittedly simplified the figures here because many libraries are in fact released under dual license, yet the trend is clear, LGPL is more popular than GPL when it comes to licensing a library. To be honest, I expected an even larger difference. Whether a given library should rather be released under the GPL or the LPGL is a different question. In this specific case, this is essentially glue code with very little added value. I can't see any strategic advantage to preventing non-GPL tools from using it. I don't think it would make any sense to have an alternative library interfacing with /dev/i2c/*, and if we don't want that to happen, we better make ours usable by everybody. Thanks, -- Jean Delvare SUSE L3 Support
