OT: Two ways Microsoft sabotages Linux desktop adoption

[Mike McCarty]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 00:41 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> 
>>On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 00:31, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>>In any case, no corporation is going to use anything which is GPL or
>>>>>LGPL and risk being taken to court.
>>>>
>>>>They do use it, they just can't distribute it - not even if they
>>>>want to give it away.  Which means that the rest of us won't
>>>>ever have it.
>>>
>>>Wrong. You can dynamically link against LGPL'ed libraries and many
>>>closed source packages, comprising $$$ ones, do.
>>
>>Yes, but RMS would prefer that the LGPL did not exist.
> 
> 
> Yes, this is his opinion. It's a political statement of his, you can
> agree with or not.
> 
> 
>>>Tiny, but popular example: RealPlayer (RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm)
>>>
>>>ldd usr/local/RealPlayer/realplay.bin
>>>        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0x00869000)
>>>        libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0x00e97000)
>>
>>You'll note there's nothing like, say, libreadline in
>>there.
> 
> 
> Exactly, because it's GPL'ed. LGPL and GPL are different things.
> Though they are similar, they are substantially different.

Yes, and in two ways. First, they affect the library itself
differently, and second, they affect the code linked with it
differently. GPL completely infects all code it touches.
LGPL doesn't, but one must still, in effect, provide source
to the customer.

Mike
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