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License is LGPL? Bad idea !
(copy from reddit, so that more developers see it)
According to our wiki https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Frontier
License is LGPL. It is a bad idea, for proprietary vendors will not be able to include this software into their systems. It must be non-copyleft. I.e. under MIT/X11 license.
A small example: TCP/IP sockets library came from BSD UNIX into both Linux and Windows as WinSock. Do you think Microsoft would be able to include this if it were LGPL? Not a chance! MS would have to develop TCP/IP implementation from scratch, which would result in harder-to-write cross-platform applications, hurting Open-Source developers mostly.
Same for Google WebM / VP8 video codec and Ogg Vorbis audio free software codecs. Those are not protected by copyleft license, for a reason. It allows proprietary vendors to integrate open-source code directly, without thinking too much.
Copyleft license (LGPL/GPL) is only good, if you want to prevent commercial proprietary forks from taking over, if you do not have a better protection in place.
A fundamental software, like Ethereum, which I view as an operating system for Internet 3.0, should not be protected by copyleft, should allow proprietary vendors to integrate freely (into Windows and Mac OS X and Android). Ethereum is protected by the community consensus instead, from dumb forking, so copyleft license is not needed, and is harmful for this project.
Recommendation: MIT/X11 license.
-Technologov, an early Ethereum IPO investor and open-source community member.
According to our wiki https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Frontier
License is LGPL. It is a bad idea, for proprietary vendors will not be able to include this software into their systems. It must be non-copyleft. I.e. under MIT/X11 license.
A small example: TCP/IP sockets library came from BSD UNIX into both Linux and Windows as WinSock. Do you think Microsoft would be able to include this if it were LGPL? Not a chance! MS would have to develop TCP/IP implementation from scratch, which would result in harder-to-write cross-platform applications, hurting Open-Source developers mostly.
Same for Google WebM / VP8 video codec and Ogg Vorbis audio free software codecs. Those are not protected by copyleft license, for a reason. It allows proprietary vendors to integrate open-source code directly, without thinking too much.
Copyleft license (LGPL/GPL) is only good, if you want to prevent commercial proprietary forks from taking over, if you do not have a better protection in place.
A fundamental software, like Ethereum, which I view as an operating system for Internet 3.0, should not be protected by copyleft, should allow proprietary vendors to integrate freely (into Windows and Mac OS X and Android). Ethereum is protected by the community consensus instead, from dumb forking, so copyleft license is not needed, and is harmful for this project.
Recommendation: MIT/X11 license.
-Technologov, an early Ethereum IPO investor and open-source community member.
Comments
"Short answer: You should use the GPL over MIT only if you want to prohibit anyone from ever taking your software and making a closed-source derivative."
It has always confused me in terms of the difference between plugin and modifications to main code. (Because I am a developer and that lines gets blurry in my mind.)
But, I'd think the purpose here would be so that a large company couldn't take Ethereum and try to make it seem like their own closed source thing. I don't think this is prevent Ethereum integration into browsers, it is to prevent some Fortune 100 company from changing a few bits in Ethereum and calling it their own thing. (Without publicly releasing their contributions to code.)
I was against LGPL at first, but the idea is growing on me.
(And someone can correct me if I'm wrong, IANAL.)
The software certainly shouldn't be LGPL. It should be GPL so it respects the freedom of all its users rather than privileging those actors who wish to deny others their freedom.
My heart bleeds for the poor would-be free riders who don't understand that the LGPL doesn't stop them from doing so.
As for system integration, capture and neutralization of Ethereum by legacy platforms would be a bad thing. Better to be like the successful free software web browsers that currently dominate the market than their increasingly marginalized proprietary alternatives.