Hi,

I'm just reading your new FAQ and I think that there are some things, that stay unclear.

- 1.4
You wrote something about a "modified [...] LGPL" (the following is also unclear). But on the main page you wrote "modified GPL".

You wrote "It is therefore possible to create commercial software [...]". This suggests, that this is what the modification sais. But the GPL and the LGPL both permit creation of commercial software.
Did you perhaps mean "proprietary software"?
Or you could also write "ClosedSource software" which makes it even more clear.

BTW. why modifying the LGPL? What about putting the RTL under a BSD license?

- 6.1
You wrote, that apps are running under "Linux: Kernel v1.x or later". But when I compile an app, it's in ELF format. ELF officially first enterd the stable versions in Linux 2.0.0.
Did you perhaps mean v1.1.x?

- 1.17
Remarks:
- UPX ist also for linux, but the binutils have problems with such applications.
- You can perhaps better use "gzexe" to compress runnable apps. Gzexe is normally shipped with any Linux, FreeBSD, HURD and perhaps lots of other Unix-like systems. Gzexe has the drawback, that it needs some Unix commands to be on the right place in the path - so you should not use it for releasing apps.

- 2.9
Syslinux: you should metion, that this has nothing to do with the bootloader of the same name.

Closed software is a very new term which wasn't know when this FAQ was initally wriiten :)
But Closed Source is probably the correct term: you may statically link the FPC run time library to your Closed Source application. Which isn't allowed by the LGPL though someone mentioned somewhere some time ago :), that RMS said that there is no difference between static and dynamic linking regarding the LPGL and legal issues.

The reason for the modification
is simple: go32v2 has no full featured dynamically linked solution, the win dlls are a mess, and for for the linux .so system FPC misses the PIC support thus we decided to allow static linking of the FPC run time library with "proprietary software". But as I said above, I don't know if it makes a difference.

BTW. why modifying the LGPL? What about putting the RTL under a BSD license?

BSD is too lax for me.

Also it is a modified GPL, modified so that it resembles LGPL (license is older than the L-GPL).

>BTW. why modifying the LGPL? What about putting the RTL under a BSD >license? BSD is too lax for me.

BSD adds opening of the source, and allows commercial parties to make fully proprietary distributions of your systems.

Hello,

I think, these parts of my mail have gone under in the other discussion. So I send it again...