Mastodawn

Folks asked me about #chardet #LGPL situation. @corbet (on @lwn) published https://lwn.net/Articles/1061534/ it; everyone should read that.

Afterwards, take a 👀 at my comment on chardet's issue tracker:
https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/355#issuecomment-4145369025

TL;DR: I'm leading an effort at @conservancy to analyze this situation. The results will be published. It will take a long time — for good reason. Meanwhile, anyone using chardet commercially should call their lawyer.

#LGPLv2.1 #copyleft #SFC #SoftwareFreedom #LLM #AI #copyright

The relicensing of chardet

Chardet is a Python module that attempts to determine which character set was used to encode a [...]

LWN.net

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Bradley M. Kühn Dec 30

@stefanha

This is a good question, & goes to the core of common confusions about what #LGPLv2.1 & #GPLv2 require.
My essay here explains the history…
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-the-gpl-right-to-install/
…about this matter.
What the GPLv2 requires is the software *under* GPLv2 has to be upgradable/installable, but breaking the proprietary applications is ok upon changing the underlying software is permitted; that's what TiVo did.

LPGLv2.1§6 requires that you can relink (either through replacing .so or statically) in place

“Tivoization” & Your Right to Install Under Copyleft & GPL

Two schools of thought about the purpose of copyleft have been at odds for some time. Simply put, the question is: are copyleft licenses designed primarily to protect the rights of large companies that produce electronics and software products, or is copyleft designed primarily to protect individual users' rights to improve, modify, repair, and reinstall their software?

Software Freedom Conservancy