Why are some GNU libraries released under the ordinary GPL rather than the Lesser GPL?
Using the Lesser GPL for any particular library constitutes a retreat for free software. It means we partially abandon the attempt to defend the users’ freedom, and some of the requirements to share what is built on top of GPL-covered software. In themselves, those are changes for the worse. Sometimes a localized retreat is a good strategy. Sometimes, using the LGPL for a library might lead to wider use of that library, and thus to more improvement for it, wider support for free software, and so on. This could be good for free software if it happens to a large extent. But how much will this happen? We can only speculate. It would be nice to try out the LGPL on each library for a while, see whether it helps, and change back to the GPL if the LGPL didn’t help. But this is not feasible. Once we use the LGPL for a particular library, changing back would be difficult. So we decide which license to use for each library on a case-by-case basis. There is a long explanation of how we judge the
