LGPL clarification

[David Johnson]

On Wednesday 01 November 2000 06:57 pm, Bryan George wrote:

> Under current copyright law, reproducing a similar concept, even using
> different language, would be a violation once I've been exposed to the
> original work, so I couldn't write a license from scratch that resembled
> the LGPL either without FSF permission.  Given that the probability that
> FSF would give that permission to someone outside FSF is roughly, oh,
> zero, that means that the LGPL is for practical purposes the only Open
> Source license that can ever exist to cover libraries.

Copyright only covers a specific expression of an idea, not the idea itself. 
If the FSF held a patent (hah!) on the idea of copyleft, then you would be 
right. But they only have rights to specific expressions of that idea as 
contained in the GPL and LGPL.

So go ahead and write a license that covers all the points of the LGPL, but 
don't follow it's structure or wording. I would say that the odds of RMS 
approving it are pretty good as long as it complies with his Free Software 
definition. He might counsel you to use the LGPL instead, but he won't take 
you to court over it.

-- 
David Johnson
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