[sane-devel] SANE2, what do we want ?

[m. allan noah]

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 12:52 PM, Julien BLACHE <jb at jblache.org> wrote:
> Lei Chen <Raymond.Chen at Sun.COM> wrote:
>
>  Hi,
>
>
>  >> agreed. if i were to make sane2 myself, i would change the license to
>  >> straight GPL3.
>  >
>  > Why not LGPL? Is LGPL not so straight for libraries and dynamic
>  > objects? The current license makes thing complex. People have to pay
>  > close attention to GPL libraries and backends, with or without that
>  > exception claiming, in SANE.
>
>  All backends in SANE are GPL + exception, which is roughly equivalent
>  to the LGPL.
>
>  Relicensing SANE is not possible, because quite a few copyright
>  holders cannot be reached to obtain permission.
>
>

Julien is correct of course, but you asked why would i do that if i
had the chance?

Because we are routinely asked about things like descreening or color
correction- problems which have been solved long ago, with code that
is now lost to us, because it was only delivered as a binary.
Reinventing the wheel over and over, just because some now-dead
company decided that some text was secret is a stupid waste of human
resources.

Using the LGPL allows that trend to continue, with proprietary
front-ends, and proprietary backend 'plugins'.

allan
--
"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"