[Bf-committers] libreDWG

[Ralph Giles]

On 16 August 2010 10:14, Martin Poirier <theeth at yahoo.com> wrote:

> For audaspace it doesn't matter (LGPLv3 doesn't force anything on the rest of the code).

LGPLv3 doesn't force anything on the rest of the code, but the GPLv2
does force things on the LGPLv3. That is, the additional protections
of software freedom incorporated from the GPLv3 in the LGPLv3 count as
"additional restrictions" as far as the GPLv2 is concerned. I believe
linking is thus forbidden under the GPLv2's strong-copyleft
provisions, unless the library falls under the "system library"
exception. Which wouldn't be the case for a dependency included in the
blender tree. Therefore any GPLv2+ code gets upgraded to the GPLv3,
and any GPLv2-only code is a problem.

This was discussed recently in the context of the gnome project. See
for example starting here:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2010-July/msg00097.html

 -r