[cairo] Cairo and Mozilla licensing

[Carol Spears]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 04:27:25PM +0100, James Henstridge wrote:
> Given that this seems to be a contentious issue, what would the 
> implications of dual licensing Cairo under LGPL and MPL with respect to 
> Carl's desire to keep the code open?
> 
> It would certainly satisfy Mozilla's licensing preferences, and seems to 
> be a more friendly for embedders.
> 
> Unless I'm mistaken though, it would give people the ability to 
> distribute a modified version of cairo and not release the changes to 
> the library itself (since the MPL doesn't require you to release changes 
> in new source files in the derivative work).  This is gives a lot less 
> protection than the LGPL.  Am I missing anything here?
> 
one thing for certain.  knowing how many computers download your
software; passing those so called "usability tests"; protecting your
code with licenses that allow you to hide things that were supposed to
be free -- none of these things do anything to actually get your
software on desktops and used by human beings.

things like filling a niche and being attractive to good code writers
seem to actually work as an interface between code writers and users.

another thing that works is having the software installed automatically.
i often wonder if this is what is responsible more for kde's (recent, by
my standards) success.

the human beings who actually use this stuff to accomplish an actual
task will find *good* software.  they will pay what they can.  many
people have tasks and cannot afford software.

i think it would take only a few minutes to show that a community of
volunteers can make better software than the best paid programmers in
the world can.  the license needs to be there though.

you have several different computer displays to fund your companies
with; can you consider to not destroy this one with so many (already
well discussed) loopholes?

carol