I'm assuming you left out the list in accident and won't mind that I quote you a little: On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 10:22 PM, Sergei Golubchik <serg@askmonty.org> wrote:

On Dec 29, Henrik Ingo wrote:

...

(I'm pretty sure readline developers didn't quite realize what they were doing here. Their original goal with their choice of license was to create an advantage for GPL licensed apps, now they are doing exactly the opposite.)

I think it was intentional.

readline is a gnu project, hosted on gnu.org. It looks like an FSF policy to use GPLv3. Other gnu software than I've checked is also on GPLv3 (in particular, libbfd - that is used by binutils, gdb, etc - so it's kind of fundamental for development chain).

Yes, I'm aware of this. However, most FSF *libraries* are licensed LGPL. Only readline and a few others (apparently then libbfd, if you say so) are GPL. The purpose of this is to make those libraries exclusively available to GPL software, or also compatible FOSS software. (eg. a BSD licensed application could use a GPL licensed library as long as source code of the app is in fact made available.)

I might be wrong, but I think using GPLv3 for all (or most) GNU projects, including essencial libraries, is quite intentional.

Well, it is intentional for FSF in the sense that it is policy. For the libraries that use LGPL it is also quite fine to force everyone to use them under LGPLv3, as it won't have similar bad effects on the apps that use those libraries. However, in the case of readline and other libraries that are GPL, this has the effect of hurting projects that are GPLv2 only, while it in fact improves the situation for non-copyleft projects such as those under Apache license. (Apache license is considered by FSF to be incompatible with GPLv2 but compatible with GPLv3.) I very much doubt that this particular consequence was intentional. To support GPL licensed software, the FSF should in this case have licensed readline as both GPLv2 and GPLv3. henrik -- henrik.ingo@avoinelama.fi +358-40-8211286 skype: henrik.ingo irc: hingo www.openlife.cc My LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=9522559