Re: Org-mode exporters licensing

[Oleh Krehel <ohwoeowho@gmail.com>]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> I'm preparing a tutorial on writing Org-mode exporters.  To this end,
> I'm writing a (simplistic) Oddmuse/WikiCreole exporter.  Rather
> obviously, I'm modeling it on existing exporters (mainly ox-latex),
> which seem to share a lot of structure (function names and docstrings in
> particular).  I'd like to put my code in public domain.  However,
> I reuse parts of GPL'd code (as I mentioned, quite generic ones, but
> still).  Is it fine, or should I expect a visit from EFF lawyers or
> something?

If anywhere in your code there's (require 'org), you have to release
your code under GPL.

If you want a Public Domain license, you'll have to write an exporter
basically without using Elisp, since the GNU Emacs implementation of
Elisp is GPL. You could write it in Python, for example, and just add a
shell call in Elisp. In that case the Python code could be PD, while the
couple-line Elisp shell call would still be GPL.

regards,
Oleh