Re: luaprompt

[Steve Litt <slitt@...>]

On Sat, 7 Apr 2012 21:20:41 +0100
Kevin Martin <kev82@khn.org.uk> wrote:

> > I must say I anticipated objections to the GPL but now I'm a little
> > confused.  The same person who says the library is next to unusable
> > if its placed under the GPL later says that he'd consider using it
> > because it's a great commercial weapon.
> 
> 
> As a developer in a small company (we develop software to solve a
> specific optimization problem), I can tell you that we almost
> entirely avoid GPL licensed things.

I'm a big fan of GPL for user type software -- I use Linux and
VimOutliner every day. But I'd probably prefer the MIT license for a
programming *tool*, so that I could use the tool to make both free and
proprietary software.

At the very least, the LGPL makes it legal to use the LGPL tool in a
proprietary program. As a practical matter though, LGPL's requirement
of recompilability makes it hard to distribute your program without
distributing your proprietary source code. 

For an almost-GPL license that permits proprietary usage as a tool and
only a tool, see the Harbour Project License.
(http://www.harbour-project.org/license.html) Pay particular attention
to the exception.

SteveT