From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rob Browning Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Re: The Guile license and the use of LGPL libs (like GMP). Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 14:02:23 -0500 Sender: guile-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: <874rgsnlj4.fsf@raven.i.defaultvalue.org> References: <87vg9oqf5b.fsf_-_@raven.i.defaultvalue.org> <877klouny2.fsf@zagadka.ping.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1022612570 13302 127.0.0.1 (28 May 2002 19:02:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 19:02:50 +0000 (UTC) Cc: guile-devel@gnu.org, guile-user@gnu.org, Greg Troxel Return-path: Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 17CmF7-0003SQ-00 for ; Tue, 28 May 2002 21:02:49 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17CmFR-0000Mu-00; Tue, 28 May 2002 15:03:09 -0400 Original-Received: from dsl-209-87-109-2.constant.com ([209.87.109.2] helo=defaultvalue.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17CmEi-0000JR-00; Tue, 28 May 2002 15:02:24 -0400 Original-Received: from raven.i.defaultvalue.org (raven.i.defaultvalue.org [192.168.1.7]) by defaultvalue.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 063FDB4; Tue, 28 May 2002 14:02:24 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by raven.i.defaultvalue.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 5FDF6131; Tue, 28 May 2002 14:02:23 -0500 (CDT) Original-To: Marius Vollmer In-Reply-To: <877klouny2.fsf@zagadka.ping.de> (Marius Vollmer's message of "28 May 2002 20:28:21 +0200") Original-Lines: 60 User-Agent: Gnus/5.090006 (Oort Gnus v0.06) Emacs/21.2 (i386-pc-linux-gnu) Errors-To: guile-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:667 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.guile.devel:667 Marius Vollmer writes: > If it is not too much hassle, we should keep our current bignum > implementation as the fall-back. We might have a thin interface layer > between libguile and GMP (as some SCM_I_BIGNUM_ macros say). That > interface could be tuned to be efficiently implemented by GMP, and > straightforwardly but not necessarily efficiently implemented with the > current stuff. What I'm trying to say is that we should not make > ourselves a lot of work to keep the fall back be efficient. I think I can do this without too much trouble. I'll go ahead and see after I get the next beta out and start working on 1.7 again. > That would be a solution, but somehow, I don't like it very much. It > can't hurt to ask. I am a bit unsure about my own position here, so I > would have to think about this a bit more. I would ask RMS what he > thinks about removing the exception from libguile and about adding the > restriction to GMP. But I don't know yet in what direction I would > argue myself... I don't really like this option too much either, unless the FSF really does consider Guile a Very Special Case. > That would not be good. GMP is the technically Right Thing to use, > and it would be strange to refuse our 'own' software for its > restrictive license terms, wouldn't it? Agreed. > [1] Somehow, it escaped me that the exception was not equivalent to > LGPL. I had this image in my head where the FSF were trying a new > strategy since they didn't really seem to like the LGPL any more. But > I also _knew_ that the exception did not turn the GPL into the LGPL. > If someone had asked me directly... :-/ Well, my recollecion is that Guile was intended to have a somewhat special status. Since the FSF kinda hoped for World Domination on the extension language front, the goal was to make sure the license didn't get in the way, but only with respect to that particular issue -- hence the exception. I can see the point, but it does make things a little more complicated when Guile wants to depend (at the direct linking level) on anything else. Lets see how hard it is for me to get a --without-gmp fallback working. If I can, then we can probably just put a note in LICENSE and forget about it for now. I'll have to see how to best arrange this. Anyone here familiar enough with goops to know if we might be able to handle bignums via goops with sufficient efficiency? I kinda doubt it, but I was wondering. In any case I want to see if there's a way to refactor the numerics so that the bignum code is less tangled with the rest. I'm not sure it's possible without too much loss of efficiency, but I'll check. -- Rob Browning rlb @defaultvalue.org, @linuxdevel.com, and @debian.org Previously @cs.utexas.edu GPG=1C58 8B2C FB5E 3F64 EA5C 64AE 78FE E5FE F0CB A0AD _______________________________________________ Guile-devel mailing list Guile-devel@gnu.org http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-devel