From: Per Bothner <per@bothner.com>
Cc: guile-user@gnu.org
Subject: Re: What if Guile changed its license to be LGPL?
Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2002 13:11:11 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <3CFD1EDF.8050403@bothner.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 87elfmu98g.fsf@zagadka.ping.de
Marius Vollmer wrote:
> The special license of Guile means that we can't use other LGPLed
> software for it without putting the whole of Guile under the LGPL,
> effectively.
I don't believe that is the case. There is no conflict between
the LGPL and the Guile GPL+exception license.
The real problem is that it makes it difficult to distribute a
a proprietary executable that includes a statically linked
copy of GMP. In contrast, the existing Guile license allows
you to distribute a proprietary executable that includes a statically
linked copy of Guile.
For most people this is not an issue: They can link against
a shared library version of libgmp. (I see that Red Hat 7.3
comes with such a shared library.) The main problem is for
people on embedded systems. They are unlikely to be using
Guile, or if they use Guile, they are unlikely to want bignums.
So I don't think it's a real problem. My suggestion:
(1) Keep the Guile license as is.
(2) Add a --with-gmp configure option. It defaults to true if
it finds a shared library version of libgmp; false otherwise.
(3) If --with-gmp is "no", use floating-point numbers instead
of bignums. (Actually, embedded systems might not want floating
point either, but that is a separate issue.)
You might (if you haven't already) ask RMS about modifying the GMP
license to GPL+exception, at least in the context of Guile. (I would
also love to be able to use GMP for libgcj, the GCJ Java urn-time
library, when implementing java.lang.math.)
--
--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com http://www.bothner.com/per/
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2002-06-04 20:11 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2002-06-04 19:36 What if Guile changed its license to be LGPL? Marius Vollmer
2002-06-04 20:11 ` Per Bothner [this message]
2002-06-04 21:28 ` Marius Vollmer
2002-06-04 21:55 ` Per Bothner
2002-06-05 7:05 ` tomas
2002-06-05 22:54 ` Marius Vollmer
2002-06-05 23:08 ` Per Bothner
2002-06-05 23:31 ` Marius Vollmer
2002-06-06 12:33 ` Panagiotis Vossos
2002-06-05 23:07 ` Marius Vollmer
2002-06-04 21:59 ` Marius Vollmer
2002-06-05 15:45 ` Neil Jerram
2002-06-05 22:45 ` Marius Vollmer
2002-06-06 2:36 ` Thien-Thi Nguyen
2002-06-06 2:52 ` Thien-Thi Nguyen
2002-06-05 21:57 ` Dale P. Smith
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