Re: Since we are talking about libtool....

[Sascha Schumann <sa...@schumann.cx>]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Bill Stoddard wrote:

> I used to bother Ryan, Manoj and Rasmus with this one on almost a daily basis.
> Here goes again .... :-)
>
> If I ship a precompiled version of Apache 2.0, will it be possible for folks
> that install/use that precompiled version to build DSOs to link into the
> server -without- using libtool (or any other GPL'ed tool)?   I always thought
> so, but now (after mucking around with PHP 4.0, which is quite cool BTW) I
> think not. And Apache's apxs script now has libtool calls all over the place
> and libtool (the generated script) is most definitely GPLed. I would think
> this would be a serious problem for anyone who ships precompiled binaries as
> part of a larger product (IBM HTTP Server, Oracle HTTP Server, Covalent Raven,
> et. al.) if they want to allow folks to build DSOs to link into these servers.

    If you look at ltmain.sh, ltconfig, config.guess, config.sub
    which basically form libtool, you will notice this clause:

    # As a special exception to the GNU General Public License,
    # if you distribute this file as part of a program that
    # contains a configuration script generated by Autoconf, you
    # may include it under the same distribution terms that you
    # use for the rest of that program.

    The same clause appears in the generated libtool shell
    script.

    - Sascha