A few comments

[Ethan Blanton]

Colin Barrett spake unto us the following wisdom:
> Isn't telepathy-haze behaving the same way?

Not at all.  Telepathy and telepathy haze are both Free Software
projects.

> It certainly seems like there is a great demand for libpurple which is  
> at this point best of breed for accessing many popular IM protocols.
> 
> I realize that the copyright situation is probably intractable at this  
> point, but seems like as a library, libpurple would want to be LGPL (I  
> am aware the L is for Lesser, but it's a popular choice for library  
> authors nonetheless)

I do not think this is a good idea.  Library authors who want to
promote free software generally choose the lgpl only when there are
equivalent commercial offerings with real foothold already available.
In other words, when the availability of a Free resource is not likely
to cause someone to start a new Free Software project to gain access
to that resource.  In this case, there exists no commercial equivalent
to libpurple (at least, that I am aware of).  Even if there did, as
you rightly point out, license changing is not at all practical at
this point.  See COPYRIGHT for details.  ;-)

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
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