license question

[ender <en...@objectrealms.net>]

let me preface this, by stating that i hate license wars, and i support that 
authors be free to make license choices as they see fit.

that said, i had a question regarding subversion licensing. i'm interested in 
releasing a project management app under the gpl that integrates subversion 
via the python api. is it legal to do so, as the apache and gpl licenses are 
incompatible? i wouldn't be distributing the subversion client, or server, 
just python code that would be dependant on a user installation of the server 
and swig bindings.

thanks

-e


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org

Re: license question

[Greg Hudson <gh...@MIT.EDU>]

On Tue, 2002-10-15 at 20:06, ender wrote:
> let me preface this, by stating that i hate license wars, and i support that 
> authors be free to make license choices as they see fit.
> 
> that said, i had a question regarding subversion licensing. i'm interested in 
> releasing a project management app under the gpl that integrates subversion 
> via the python api. is it legal to do so, as the apache and gpl licenses are 
> incompatible?

I'm really not sure; it hinges on whether distributors of your work are
creating a work derived of your code and Subversion code.  On the one
hand, they're clearly both being used as part of the same problem, but
on the other hand, there's no linking step.

At any rate, if all the GPL'd code is yours, you can clear up any
possible problem by adding an exception to the GPL.  This is discussed
(with an example) in:

  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WritingFSWithNFLibs

If you plan to use anyone else's GPL code, you'll have to ask them to
make an exception as well, or decide that there's no legal issue because
there's no linking step, or decide that no one is likely to make an
issue of it regardless.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org