Glasgow mafia meeting at PLDI

Manuel M. T. Chakravarty chak@cse.unsw.edu.au
Wed, 27 Jun 2001 00:13:23 +1000


Alastair David Reid <reid@cs.utah.edu> wrote,

> Alastair David Reid <reid@cs.utah.edu> wrote,
> >> o BSD fans think that "contamination" is bad 
> >> o LGPL fans think that "contamination" is good
> 
> Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak@cse.unsw.edu.au> writes:
> > *sigh* Could we leave the rhetoric to Craig Mundie?  Everybody
> > thinks that "contamination" is bad.  This is why such words are not
> > helpful in a technical discussion. 
> 
> Sorry, I wasn't trying to get into that sort of argument.

Ok, sorry for tripping over it, then.

> I needed a word for <whatever it is that LGPL does which has
> consequences for some/all non-LGPL code that is linked/compiled
> against it and/or combined with> and the only words I could think of
> are the ones the anti-GPL folk use.  The quotes round the word were
> intended to mean that the meaning wasn't simply contaminate.

You can call LGPL, for example, "protective", as it protects
the code against closed forks.  If you think that this word
is too positive, call it "restrictive" if you like.

Cheers,
Manuel