re: Ant licensing issues (fwd)

[Saviely <ca...@SDF.lonestar.org>]

You may find this useful, if you need to link against non-free programs
while using GPL.

I assume this won't land on Slashdot.org, like last night...

Saviely 


On Mon, 23 Oct 2000, Free Software Foundation wrote:
> Yes, if your software *requires* the Java standard libraries without
> question, and will not work in Kaffe, there could be licensing issues.  They
> are solvable, of course, if you are the copyright on the software.
> 
> To use the GPL in this case, you must provide the licensee special
> permission to use your software with the proprietary software in question.
> To do this, you declare a special exception, wholly outside of the GPL, in
> your permission notice.  This exception gives the licensee special permission
> that is not given by the GPL.  Here is what your permission notice might
> look like:
> 
>    Copyright (C) yyyy  <name of copyright holder>                                                             
> 
>     This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
>     it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
>     the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
>     (at your option) any later version.
> 
>     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
>     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
>     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
>     GNU General Public License for more details.
> 
>     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
>     along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
>     Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
> 
>     As a special exception, <name of copyright holder> gives permission to
>     link this program with <FOO>, and distribute the resulting executable,
>     without including the source code for <FOO> in the source distribution.
> 
> <FOO> would be the official name of the specific software package that your
> program must link against to work properly.  You can include multiple
> paragraphs like the last one if there are additional programs.

Re: Ant licensing issues (fwd)

[Mark Wielaard <ma...@klomp.org>]

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 01:00:59AM +1000, Peter Donald wrote:
> At 08:24  23/10/00 -0500, you wrote:
> >You may find this useful, if you need to link against non-free programs
> >while using GPL.

>  As a special exception, <name of copyright holder> gives permission to
>  link this program with <FOO>, and distribute the resulting executable,
>  without including the source code for <FOO> in the source distribution.
> 
> <FOO> would be the official name of the specific software package that
> your program must link against to work properly. You can include
> multiple paragraphs like the last one if there are additional programs.
 
> yep - but that essentially makes your program not-GPL compatable and thus
> not really GPL ;)

That is indeed the case. I find it strange that the FSF recommends this
language. They could easily have recommended the following language which
would make the code really GPL when a free version of FOO would be available
later. The license of Guile (a GNU extension language library) adds the
following:

 * [...]
 * If you write modifications of your own for GUILE, it is your choice
 * whether to permit this exception to apply to your modifications.
 * If you do not wish that, delete this exception notice.

That gives you the option to remove the exception later to make it
really GPL when the free version of the library is released.

> >I assume this won't land on Slashdot.org, like last night...
> 
> hmmm ? Did I miss something ?

Someone posted a conversation with RMS on Free Software licensing
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/10/22/1553233&mode=nested>

Cheers,

Mark

re: Ant licensing issues (fwd)

[Peter Donald <do...@locus.apache.org>]

At 08:24  23/10/00 -0500, you wrote:
>You may find this useful, if you need to link against non-free programs
>while using GPL.

yep - but that essentially makes your program not-GPL compatable and thus
not really GPL ;)

>I assume this won't land on Slashdot.org, like last night...

hmmm ? Did I miss something ?


Cheers,

Pete

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