[cairo] Re: License for cairo changed to LGPL

[George McBay]

> David Turner Wrote,
>
> I'll stop the nit-picking here, my point is that:
>
> - if you think that non-open source products are 
> going to use statically-linked LGPL libraries, you >
probably need a reality check. The technical and 
> legal hurdles are just too much.

I'll second that.  As a real world example, I just
recently released a shareware game that uses Cairo (@
http://www.mischief.com ).  The game makes extensive
use of vector graphics, which Cairo renders nicely
even at lower resolutions and that opens up a lot of
possibilities for doing things like porting the engine
to small systems (mobile platforms), where the whole
dynamic linking issue gets really fuzzy.  Too fuzzy
for me to touch it with a ten foot pole, so I've been
specifically avoiding L/GPL licensed code even though
I do use lots of OSS and have contributed to many OSS
projects.  And static linking while still abiding by
the LGPL is just too much of a pain to consider.

For me, the issue has nothing to do with trying to
hide any changes I might make to cairo and everything
to do with the fact that there are some areas where I
feel that the LGPL just falls apart for real world
usage.  

I just caught up on this whole license change debate
today and it is pretty sad news from my perspective.

For now my plans are to keep using the older version
of Cairo that I've already been using (which is
pre-license-change, so still MIT licensed legally) and
just incrementally migrate away from Cairo to
something like Antigrain.  Which is unfortunate
because I really like/prefer the Cairo API, but I just
can't live with some of the baggage the LGPL piles on.