We see many non-academic users (startups, enterprises, gov, ...) where it is common to only allow licenses like Apache, MIT, & BSD for libraries, so LGPL often makes sw not even a contender

Like I said, I'm a fan and refer folks to it when fits. Other libraries focus on strengths like licensing, viz, perf, AI, ease, etc that graph-tool doesn't invest as much in. Ex: competing with Nvidia on GPU computing is doable, but takes a special kind of focus - it's not an accident we have been working with them for years. Graph-tool is strong in general, just not everything to everyone.

It seems entirely nonsensical not to allow LGPL for library code, since it does not add any restrictions compared to BSD/MIT/etc. You should advise your users better in this regard, since they seem to not understand how these licenses work.

LGPL is understood to incur stipulations in scenarios like static linking, which for a dev library, can be a concern. These concerns are not in MIT/BSD/Apache, which is why professional organizations often have rules allowing only the latter. It takes undesirable work by developers to go against their organizational guidelines.

My job isn't to advise users on legal matters nor promote graph-tool, though I do try to increase awareness of options in general as a neutral technical party. The graph-tool's community's decision to use & stick to a relatively unpopular license (outside of academia), and the ensuing issues around legal, practical, and perception... are problems for the graph-tool community to address, not me.

We OSS our work as MIT/BSD/Apache because that's what our users accept and pay us to do. That's all that's in our control.

Python libraries cannot be statically linked.

This has nothing to do with promoting graph-tool, but not promoting disinformation, as you have been doing.

This is shameful FUD against LGPL based on blatant nonsense.

If you do this in a public forum, I can only imagine what you promote to your customers.

Lost a lot of respect for Graphistry during this interchange.

I'm confused. There was a surprise that LGPL was not seen as equiv as MIT/BSD/Apache by orgs, so I clarified with the typical example of why organizations may have default-deny rules for LGPL libraries bc the static linking restrictions, and that those default-deny rules would require devs in these orgs to get an exception. You made me curious about the Python scenario for exceptions - this thread was enlightening to me: https://www.quora.com/Can-I-use-LGPL-in-commercial-software .

Again, I try to keep our team technical & neutral about graph DB/lib/etc providers. We get used with a variety of tools, and I personally end up seeing areas where each invests more than others + try to keep discussions to that kind of objective distinction. So am genuinely curious what's wrong in my summary, both wrt legal theory and what organizations do in practice. I get frustrated when projects we help on (digital crime, outages, genomics, ...) get hamstrung by something like OSS licensing.