Re: Lua License

["Nick Trout" <nick@...>]

>  > What happens if you have LGPL copyleft? Can you only have GPL copyleft?
LGPL
>  > says you dont have to distribute changes to a library if you are
commercial
>  > and dont want to. GPL says you must always distribute changes.
>
> I am pretty sure you have misunderstood LGPL.

I'm pretty sure thats true! I read too much legal mumbo jumbo yesterday and
got a little confused. I find some of the GNU site, especially the section on
copyleft, almost more confusing than helpful. I'd just like to get on with
programming and not really have to worry about this but there are important
issues to do with your employers opinions and which code you can use without
breaching licenses and its distribution. I suppose its whether you see
internet as an "infinite resource" or an "organic, developing beast". People
like GNU and FSF see the net as the latter and there is no such thing as a
free lunch. Anyway... I'm getting too philosophical, too much GNU. So does
that mean somewhere out there, there is a huge metaphorical Gnu, growing?
Wooo.

> With it you still have to
> provide your modifications to the library, if you distribute it.
> You are not required to provide the source code of your application,
> but you have to provide the user some means to relink the application
> to the library (for library modifications etc)

Righto.

> For an application (like VisLua) LGPL is not really suitable, GPL is for
> standalone applications.
> I personally would prefer MIT, XFree or LUA style licensing, but

Perhaps you could suggest a more suitable license. It should probably just
follow the Lua license? I think I agree with John Belmonte that it may be
better if Lua followed a "standard" license (eg. BSD) so that any problems are
easier to sort out through virtue of more information being on the net. A
decision on this may give the authors more confidence on answering questions
about licensing.

> I guess I might just prefer an emacs based LUA IDE....

I think we are using the term IDE in the sense that VisLua is a suite of tools
which cooperate, and are optional and configurable, rather than a single app
which contains everything (eg. MSDev). You should still be able to use the
debugger with emacs. I expect the tools will be configurable and contain emacs
keymaps as well. Current thinking is that you can start a telnet session with
a remote Lua app and debug it. Later a GUI will be developed to provide the
"usual" debugger functionality.

Regards,
Nick