[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Thomas Zander wrote:
Yeah; thats a really big problem; plugins for CVS and SVN have the same
problem since they have the same licensing.
Actually, SVN is under a permissive license so it doesn't have this problem.
However, I take your point that even with the current licensing constraint,
integration of darcs and Eclipse is not too difficult -- it can proceed by
having darcs shipped separately from Eclipse and then hooked up (by cmdline or
by C linkage) by the end user himself.
I don't see what the problem is then. You can have the CPL plugin and
GPL Darcs in the same zip file. You don't need to relicense anything to
do that. I would assume the plugin author decided not to distribute
darcs with the plugin to keep from having to release a new one with each
new darcs release, not because of any licensing issues.
(By the way, even dynamic C linkage is subject to the GPL.)
My concern is more that I want to allow people in the future to create new
tools -- currently not conceived of -- by combining darcs code with CPL'ed
code.
Honestly, I thought that was the whole point of the Unix and GNU
approach to the matter. If you want to use Darcs' functionality you
either bundle it and call it from the command line or you release your
own code GPL.
The only example I see here that makes any sense is your mention of
Eclipse, but that really doesn't sound like reason enough. The only
reason you can't build an Eclipse plugin under the GPL is only because
IBM is worried about potential copyleft contamination as they still have
closed source Eclipse-based products that they (try to) sell. They just
worry about being sued for -stealing- distributing your plugin and then
having to open up the code that really matters to them and which they
keep hidden, once the GPL has infiltrated their code. As much as IBM
pretends to care about Open Source, they are no better than Microsoft at
the moment.
Not to mention, there is no need for Darcs code in the plugin in the
first place! The plugin should do what everyone else (writing tools
for/with darcs) is doing and use Darcs as a command line tool. What's
good enough for the gander should be plenty for the goose, no?
If/when a Darcs API is finalized, I can understand clammering for it to
be released LGPL, and I believe that having an LGPL API wrapping a GPL
core is done easy enough. But, I haven't heard a good reason to weaken
the current GPLed Darcs code.
--
--Max Battcher--
http://www.worldmaker.net/
The WorldMaker.Network: Support Open/Free Mythoi. Read the manifesto @
mythoi.com
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