On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 06:55:25PM +0100, u-x417_at_aetey.se wrote:
> My motivation for the question below is the desire to use rwcdb with/for
> permissively licensed software without imposing the extra constraints
> stemming from LGPL.

What extra constraints does it impose? The LGPL doesn't taint software
that uses the library the way the GPL does, which is probably why FSF
started calling it 'lesser gpl' instead of 'library gpl'.

The question and top answer here are probably helpful.

    http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/439136.html

The only disadvantages that I see now is that rwcdb it tied into the
Coda automake/autoconf framework instead of carrying it's own configure
like lwp/rpc2/rvm do and we currently don't actually have the setup to
build it as a dynamic library with libtool. And you'd probably want a
dynamic library to avoid static linking/derivative work grey area. But
the configure/dynamic library changes would be needed with or without a
license change if you want to actually build rwcdb outside of Coda.

> I do explicitly _not_ mean to initiate a discussion of merits or drawbacks
> of different licenses, different people do have different criteria. Here

But in that case it does become important, because various licenses (and
even public domain) do have different merits and drawbacks. You are
arguing that the LGPL has drawbacks in the form of extra constraints
without specifying how they are preventing wider use and as a solution
are proposing that CMU should therefore waive its copyrights.

My argument is that the LGPL is not the limiting factor for wider usage.
It isn't more widely used because the library source is tied into the
Coda build infrastructure, does not come as a dynamically linked
library, has insufficient documentation, and there are lots of
alternative embeddable key/value stores like gdbm, db2, sqlite, tdb,
leveldb, lmdb, and of course cdb.

I'm just arguing for the sake of argument here, but what if CMU does
want to keep copyrights and decides that an Eclipse license is a better
'more business friendly' license. That would impose other constraints
that may be incompatible with your goals. In fact, as Eclipse is GPL
incompatible we wouldn't technically be allowed to link Coda with it
anymore so I don't see that particular relicense happening any time
soon.

Jan