From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Per Bothner Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.user Subject: Re: What if Guile changed its license to be LGPL? Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2002 13:11:11 -0700 Sender: guile-user-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: <3CFD1EDF.8050403@bothner.com> References: <87elfmu98g.fsf@zagadka.ping.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1023221589 15015 127.0.0.1 (4 Jun 2002 20:13:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 20:13:09 +0000 (UTC) Cc: guile-user@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 17FKg0-0003u4-00 for ; Tue, 04 Jun 2002 22:13:08 +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 17FKex-0006Rf-00; Tue, 04 Jun 2002 16:12:03 -0400 Original-Received: from adsl-216-102-199-253.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net ([216.102.199.253] helo=bothner.com) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17FKc6-0006Jr-00 for ; Tue, 04 Jun 2002 16:09:07 -0400 Original-Received: from bothner.com (eureka.bothner.com [192.168.1.9]) by bothner.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g54KD2q22026; Tue, 4 Jun 2002 13:13:02 -0700 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020529 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en Original-To: Marius Vollmer Errors-To: guile-user-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: guile-user@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: General Guile related discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.user:530 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.guile.user:530 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/ _______________________________________________ Guile-user mailing list Guile-user@gnu.org http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-user