From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Jason Rumney Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: A plea for dynamically loadable extension modules Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 15:24:53 +0100 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: <3F27D535.9070702@gnu.org> References: <87wue0i51a.fsf@lexx.delysid.org> <871xw8i3tr.fsf@tapsellferrier.co.uk> <87k7a0i0yz.fsf@lexx.delysid.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1059575520 9197 80.91.224.249 (30 Jul 2003 14:32:00 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:32:00 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Nic , emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Wed Jul 30 16:31:57 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19hrxb-0002Ch-00 for ; Wed, 30 Jul 2003 16:29:47 +0200 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 19hrza-000706-00 for ; Wed, 30 Jul 2003 16:31:50 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.20) id 19hrtu-00059o-BR for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Wed, 30 Jul 2003 10:25:58 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.20) id 19hrtm-00055z-SB for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 30 Jul 2003 10:25:50 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.20) id 19hrtW-00051A-Ls for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 30 Jul 2003 10:25:36 -0400 Original-Received: from [209.61.173.204] (helo=integrasp.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with smtp (Exim 4.20) id 19hrt1-0004kw-7J for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 30 Jul 2003 10:25:03 -0400 Original-Received: (qmail 20168 invoked from network); 30 Jul 2003 14:17:50 -0000 Original-Received: from host217-37-167-241.in-addr.btopenworld.com (HELO ntserver.altio.com) (217.37.167.241) by 66.216.96.43 with SMTP; 30 Jul 2003 14:17:50 -0000 Original-Received: from gnu.org (ALTIOJR [192.168.111.42]) by ntserver.altio.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13) id PRKZ30N1; Wed, 30 Jul 2003 15:24:53 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-gb, en, ja Original-To: Mario Lang In-Reply-To: <87k7a0i0yz.fsf@lexx.delysid.org> X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.2 Precedence: list List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:15739 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:15739 Mario Lang wrote: > I do not fully understand this. If the use of > non-free code in Emacs is explicitly forbidden, what is the problem then? > If someone would use a dynamic loader extention to integrate > commercial code with Emacs, he would just violate the license. Allowing dynamic linking makes it easier for the end-user to violate the license, perhaps unwittingly, while the distributer of the linked module might technically escape from any wrongdoing since they are not doing the linking. But I think the specific change that the objections were raised about was a general dynamic linking mechanism that would allow Emacs to link to any library. There is another type of dynamic linking, where linked modules would need to conform to an Emacs-specific interface. Then only Emacs-specific modules could be linked to Emacs. It would then be much easier to tell developers of non-Free modules that linked to Emacs to make their code Free, since they could not claim that their module was exempt from the GPL because it was designed to link with 'Y', not with Emacs.