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GPL vs. LGPL
From: |
Feifan Zhou |
Subject: |
GPL vs. LGPL |
Date: |
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 02:23:11 +0000 (UTC) |
User-agent: |
Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) |
What was the reason for releasing Lilypond under the GPL rather than the LGPL?
In keeping with Lilypond's philosopy of providing beautiful sheet music
to everyone, I would believe that the LGPL would have been a better choice.
But I'm not here to argue my point; it would be me against the community
and would not be a very pleasant debate. Rather, I have a little problem.
I'm trying to build what will really be the first true sheet music app
for the iPad. As a pianist, I hate having to sort through huge binders,
websites, and thick anthologies to find my music,
and the iPad's large screen would allow me to house
a veritable digital library of music.
I would also like to allow for the creation and/or editing of sheet music.
To provide a quality rendering experience,
I would like to be able to include a music rendering engine
that can render beautiful anti-aliased sheet music on screen whenever possible,
in addition to displaying PDF scans as found on websites such as IMSLP.
My problem is that I have fallen in love with Lilypond. Its simplicity
and the beauty of its output is quite stunning,
and I believe it would look amazing on the iPad and make sheet music
more readily available. I have plans for a public, open sheet music library
that users can contribute to.
However, the GPLv3 does not allow me to use Lilypond
in a commercial application.
So, I'm asking for advice. Considering the license over Lilypond,
which I have no intention of breaking, what should I do about my conundrum?
Are there alternatives that produce output of the same
quality that I should consider?
Thank you in advance!