Re: XEmacs binding

On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 01:15:13PM +0100, Daniel Stenberg wrote:
> On 29 Oct 2001, Yoshiki Hayashi wrote:
>...
> > According to GNU GPL 2, you cannot distribute XEmacs executable linked
> > with APR.
>
> That is probably because of the announcement clause (BSD-style) right?

Read the license before commenting. This just serves to confuse the issue.

The Apache Software Foundation License (and the Subversion license) does
*NOT* have an announcement clause.

Stallman says that the GPL cannot be combined with the ASF License. The ASF
says that it can. Stallman will not publicly state the "why" of his
position, but simply leaves it as FUD.

Who do you want to believe?

[ the heart of the issue is really the naming stuff in clause 5 ]

>...
> > 2. Some says dlopen()'ed library is not derivative of the
> > original program.
>
> That is not what the GNU FAQ says. If you have an API more complex that just
> a main, dlopen() does not circumvent GPL. (I could dig up a link if anyone
> really cares.)

It has little to do with the API, and more to do with "is that library
required?" If the library is required, then no matter how simple/complex the
API is, the library is part of the program. It cannot function without it,
so it must obviously be "part of" the program.

However, if an interface has several options for a provider, then the GPL
cannot extend over that interface. The point here is that the program can
work with many variants, which means that the dynamic library in question is
no longer a required part of the program.

>...
> Why not use the plain modified BSD (without the announcement clause)? It
> would run fine with Apache, Subversion *and* (L)GPL.

The new BSD (or MIT) license has zero conflicts, whether perceived, FUD, or
real.

Since you have no names on the XEmacs Bindings package that you want to
preserve rights to, the ASF License doesn't really buy you much more than
the BSD/MIT licenses.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/
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