Conrad Meyer wrote:
Keep in mind, GNU readline is GPL. So I think in order to keep JRuby's license
as permissive as it is, you'll need to use editline instead (a non-GPL
readline replacement).
Well, that's certainly something to consider, but of course we wouldn't
actually copy, distribute, or modify readline. readline-ffi could either
be shipped with JRuby (under JRuby's licenses) or shipped as a separate
gem (requiring users to install it for readline support in jirb). But as
it stands now, there's very little monitoring or consideration for the
license of a Ruby gem compared to the implementation or application you
load it from. So then we mostly have the dynamic linking of readline to
consider.
Disclaimer: IANAL, and this is fuzzy territory even for people who are.
Most definitions of GPL I've read lately exclude cases of dynamically
linking in a library. This post describes a number of reasons why this
is likely a safe assumption:
http://lwn.net/Articles/172248/
The basic premise being that the GPL itself says that it does not cover
"activities other than copying, distribution and modification", and that
"the act of running the Program is not restricted". So based on those
clauses alone, as long as we're not distributing GPL-only code and we
can run if said code is not present on the target system (both of which
apply to readline/readline-ffi), we can legally link to that code.
But of course IANAL. I feel more comfortable with the ambiguity at this
point, and I personally wouldn't worry much if we shipped readline-ffi
directly in JRuby.
- Charlie
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