[Joerg Mayer <jmayer@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 11:37:15AM +1100, Tim Potter wrote:
> I don't think it's a special case for ethereal plugins.  For example
> video card drivers writing binary-only drivers for Linux are sharing
> information about that video card.

Yes, and the interpretation of the Linux kernel license is slowly shifting
to regarding binary only drivers as a break of that license.

> The gift is not on the same level though.  The company is not sharing to
> the same extent that the authors of the GPL'd software are.

We agree here. Where I differ with a GPL only license is, that GPL says
all or nothing. What I'm talking about is: Give me as much as you are
*willing* to give (at least after some pestering :-)
I assume that companies afraid of the patens clause might provide their
source code under X11/BSD license (they could do that right now, but then
they could not provide customers etc with compiled versions of Ethereal).
(my interpretation)
Others might have some proprietary protocol they do not want to share
information about at all: It looks like providing a customer with a
binary only plugin without giving him the sources when asked migth be
a violation of the current license: Still, the user would be using
Ethereal and hopefully give us feedback about things that could be
improved/are not working correctly.

So what I'd like is more of an LGPL type of license. Unfortunately LGPL
would allow new GUIs to be distributed under a proprietary license,
something I'm really hoping won't happen. So GPL + plugin exception
clause would do the job.

 Ciao
       Jörg

--
Joerg Mayer                                          <jmayer@xxxxxxxxx>
I found out that "pro" means "instead of" (as in proconsul). Now I know
what proactive means.