Marc Eberhard wrote:
So a distribution of a GNU library in millions of copies of proprietary programs would not be productive, in fact counter-productive because it doesn't give the end-users the freedoms. It might give them a technically better, but proprietary program and therefore less reason to switch to a really free alternative.
I do see this scenario only as a transient state. It will start with one free library in the closed source program. Later there will be two, three and eventually the closed part of the code will become so minimal, that it will be easy to replace it entirely.
If they want to ...
Thus a program can become free by more and more free parts in it. It's a matter of time. Each piece of free software in a closed source program is one secret less, they have in their safes.
As long as they can't make secret changes in those pieces (LGPL prevent this, as any changes to the library itself must be distributed with source when distributing a binary based on the library).
Frank