[rrd-developers] Re: C API

[Tobias Oetiker]

Hi Peter,

Granting an LGPL license to rrdtool would make it very simple to
integrate rrdtool with many non GPL tools. My intent with
publishing rrdtool under the GPL was

a) Make sure that any modifications to rrdtool will be available
   under the same liberal license as rrdtool as they are published.

b) Promote free Software. Since the GPL gives people who want to
   access rrdtool from closed-source applications some heavy
   thinking (it can be done using the cli and also the scripting
   apis and I would not even object to shared library access as
   long as the tool itself does not do any graphing and logging
   stuff itself.)

I have no interest in preventing other free software from using
rrdtool and if something like php has a license that gives people a
headache over license incompatibility, then I see no gain in this
hence I clarified the situation adding the FLOSS exception. I don't
see it interfearing with the spirit of the GPL (as you can see from
looking at the GPLv3 draft). As for the discussion, on the list
that I missed and I am sorry for this (since most of the work on
rrdtool seems to stay with me the 'developer-community' tends to slip
my minde every now and then).

As for the LGPLing rrdtool ...

Intent a) would still be valid. Intent b) would be weakened, since
LGPL is much easier on the 'consience' and I don't actualy think it
is necessary to make it easy to use rrdtool in closed source
software while I spend all that time on it giving it away for free.
But feel free to make a case for LGPL ...

The thought about the 'rrd' format is interesting, but I am not
sure the current state is something we should promote all that much
since it is platform dependent and quite rigid regarding
extensibility.

cheers
tobi
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