Hello Greg,

On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 08:45:13PM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
> u-x417_at_aetey.se writes:
> > LGPL explicitly says that certain things are a must and other things
> > are not allowed.
> 
> It would be helfup to articular the things you want to do that aren't
> possible...

Any of the things which happen to be forbidden in the license.

As an example,
include the source into a BSD-licenced (or public-domain) program.

As another example, distribute a binary which includes the code,
without the obligation to also offer the source.
(This may look like a small thing, but I dislike to have to keep loads
of source files made available along the binaries just in case anyone
would decide to check my "license honesty". Is it useful that honesty
leads to pain?)

As a third example, statically link without having the obligation
to supply the source for everything which is being linked together.
This greatly amplifies the burden above even if there are no incompatible
licenses.
Incompatible licenses become a showstopper.

As a forth example, not to be forced to read through piles of licenses
and scan through sources to be able to know "almost for sure" that given
softwares can be combined.

> > Thus, I humbly ask if you would be kind to allow the use of rwcdb
> > without the limitations of LGPL (like the linking mode choice, the source
> > delivery obligations and other constraints which can be noticeable for
> > someone else, like the prohibition of extra restrictions).
> 
> I don't think this ease for some users can be separated from the overall
> social construction of copyleft.  That's why licensing is unvaoidably
> hard.

I explicitly want to avoid a discussion or an assumption that the
social construction of copyleft is good or bad. Every developer chooses
for his/her own reasons to use the copyright legislation or not, and
if use (i.e. claim one's copyright) then whether to make the software
available to others and under which terms.

My message would be that trying to do social good via copyright laws
causes also social harm.

Among others it is me who is affected, directed to use software
(like ....db) or technologies (like dynamic linking) which I know in
enough depth to deem them unsuitable or inferior, for my use cases.

In a sense, this thread is a compliment to Jan who made rwcdb, so special
that I became motivated to spend an effort on this conversation.

Rune