Do we still need weak copyleft? (was Re: Exceptions to copyleft-next)

[Bradley M. Kühn]

Till, Richard, thanks for identifying my typos in version numbers.

Till asked:
> > Do you mean any other use case?
Richard replied:
> Maybe thinking of LGPLv3/GPLv2-only incompatiblity rather than
> LGPLv2.1-only/GPLv3 ? This was an issue that was raised late in the
> GPLv3 drafting process in mid-2007, I think particularly because it
> was then anticipated that glibc might be relicensed to LGPLv3. I know
> Bradley has in some past situations encouraged certain projects to use
> LGPLv3|GPLv2 as a way to address this.

Indeed, I was talking of LGPLv3-or-later being incompatible with
GPLv2-only.  Richard summarized above what I meant to talk about but
had the LGPL and GPL version numbers swapped so my earlier post was
nonsensical.  Thanks for the correction.

Fontana wrote:
> Of course, LGPLv2.x section 3 has almost never been literally
> complied with by any project, but in FOSS folk-understanding it is
> seen as the (or a) basis for intuitive LGPLv2.x/GPL compatibility.

The LGPLv2.1 is otherwise a great license other than that.  This idea
of changing notices was a mistake from the start — but most of us
know why RMS was such a big fan of it.  We definitely don't want to
encourage notice-changing in copyleft-next!  It's error-prone and
silly.

--
     -- bkühn — he/them — On Fediverse (via Mastodon): https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn