Re: LGPL code in the Mac App Store?
Re: LGPL code in the Mac App Store?
- Subject: Re: LGPL code in the Mac App Store?
- From: Dru Satori <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2016 18:50:50 +0000
- Thread-topic: LGPL code in the Mac App Store?
I think that this is a slightly uncharitable view of OSS devs, but not terribly inaccurate.
> On Jan 29, 2016, at 1:30 PM, Quincey Morris <email@hidden> wrote:
>
> On Jan 29, 2016, at 09:27 , email@hidden wrote:
>>
>> One thing I forget to add; probably the *very best way* to address this issue is to contact the library author and say, “Hey, I want to use your LGPL code in my Mac app and put it on the App Store; is that ok? Do you mind if people can’t dynamically link their own copy, because really, no one will want to?”
>
> This is rational, but unfortunately doing this makes the library *free* software, not *open source* software.
>
> The open source “hook” — what makes it attractive for a public spirited programmer to make it available to everyone — is that it permits others to play with the code downstream. That means (say) faster versions of the algorithms, or the extraction of intermediate results for interesting new uses, etc. Humanity is benefitted. <ahem>
>
> This doesn’t work with the above suggestion. In fact, the library author is likely to say, “Hey, I wrote this software, and you’ve made it an essential component of your app, and you’re *selling* the app and making yourself rich with the money??? Gimme some.”
>
> I think a better technical approach would be to embed the library as a framework in your app, but arrange that if a version of the framework is in (say) /Library/Frameworks, that one is dynamically loaded instead of the built-in framework. You might also need to be able to provide the source code of the version you embedded, but it would be easy for users to substitute other (ABI-compatible) builds for yours.
>
> The problem is that I don’t think there’s a mechanism for doing this. The path to the embedded framework is baked into the app, I believe, and you can’t change it without invalidating the code signature of the app. Further it would be a horrible security hole if you could simply override any embedded framework in any with an external hacked one.
>
> However, for designated frameworks, if there was a way — I dunno, an environment variable you could set — to adjust the load location of just those frameworks, the result would be approximately in the spirit of the LGPL.
>
> But I’m certainly not holding my breath on this.
>
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