Hi,

From: "Christian Kaiser" <chk / online.de>
>
> The lawyers fear that we need to pass all the files on to the user (which
> would by itself not be an absolute no-no), but then we would need to look at
> all files, make sure all of them can be copied legally, and so on; add all
> the copyright information to our own terms of use. Lawyers are payed for
> looking danger in every corner, but I need to accept their statement.
> 
> Right now they said that it's not clear that we can use Ruby at all.
[...]
> The old RegEx is already under LGPL, so then there would be no difference. I
> assume Oniguruma is free. LGPL _should_ be no problem for us (it allows
> linking to an executable or library that is under LGPL without restriction,
> which we would do), but nobody can tell for sure.

"I am not a lawyer".. etc...  But... 

I'm trying to understand what it is that "nobody can tell
for sure."  Do you mean that nobody can tell for sure what
the LGPL allows?

> Yes, but you also seem to be unsure about these issues... "you _probably_
> would have no legal difficulties". That's what I want to show: it's really
> hard as it is now, to be sure of the legal issues of commercial use. Which
> as a single one-man-show developer would stop me from using it as I have no
> lawyers. Some of them will ignore the problems, and some will use a
> different script language - the latter bad for Ruby and its acceptance.

I'm confused.  Are you suggesting that you need a staff of
lawyers to feel comfortable using LGPL code?

> I don't blame Matz - he mabe did not have an alternative to the old regex
> (and other files mentioned in LEGAL), or he did not care, but this is an
> issue that should be taken care of.

Matz definitely cared... It's one of his stated reasons for
wanting a new regexp engine, so it could be under Ruby's 
license, which is even less restrictive than LGPL.

But even so - LGPL code is used in commercial (closed source)
apps all the time, via dynamic linking.  That's the whole
point of the LGPL as I understand it.

Still unclear on what it is that you're asserting needs to
be "taken care of". 


Regards,

Bill