hi!
I did some research on GMP and LGPL, the results are attached. I don't know if
this is a go/nogo for GMP, but it is pretty clear now.
Further the FSF asks for perl6/parrot to use Artistic 2.0, what is the discussion
state on that? (RFC 346)
If somebody else wants to talk to FSF please use "[gnu.org #206060]" in the subject,
(simulating a reply to my attached mail) if I should ask further questions, I'll
gladly do so...
Cheers,
Armin Obersteiner
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] pgp public key on request CU
--- Begin Message ---
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Tue Jul 13 05:35:33 2004]:
>
> hi!
>
> > > > > The perl6/parrot people would like to use GMP within their
> > > > > project, which all melts down to a license problem - as
> > > > > always :)
> > > > > GMP is LGPL
> > > > > parrot is GPL + Artistic
> > > >
> > > > (I assume you mean a dual disjunctive license here, like
> > > > Perl5)
> > > >
> > > > It looks to me like there is no problem here. The LGPL will
> > > > allow linking against even proprietary versions of Parrot
> > > > (with certain minor and easy to follow restrictions). So long
> > > > as users can link in new versions of GMP (simplifying),
> > > > proprietary versions of Parrot can link with GMP.
> > >
> > > the question is about distribution (Artistic - any version -
> > > allows it):
> > >
> > > is it allowed to ship a binary parrot with a LGPL GMP library,
> > > but without the GMP source code included?
> > >
> > > Section 4 of LGPL would in my opininon require that... or am I
> > > wrong here?
> >
> > No, this wouldn't be allowed. The source code to GMP would have
> > to be either provided or offered. But the source code to Parrot
> > would not need to be available.
>
> What does offered mean?
> Is a link (line in the README) to a ftp.gnu.org mirror enough?
> Is a link (line in the README) to CPAN (mail perl repository) enough?
For electronic distribution from CPAN, the latter works.
For electronic distribution in general, the source code should be in
the same place the binaries are. In other words, you can't link to
someone else's copy of the source.
For dynamic linking, no more is needed.
For static linking, source or object code of the executable needs to
be provided.
This code (source of lib, source or object code of exec) can also be
offered by mail order.
> > We can't relicense GMP to make this possible -- it would defeat the
> > whole purpose of the LGPL.
>
> It's not that we don't want to privide the source, but e.g. on
> embedded devices it's just too much data or current perl solution
> providers usually don't ship the source in the same archive and just
> point to it.
>
> I thought the main purpose of the LGPL is that you can get the source,
> work on it and relink it with a closed source application, not *where*
> you get it, and that the source is provided from the beginning...
It seems to me that the LGPL does allow this, more-or-less. The "just
pointing" thing can offer a web download as well as mail-order, but it
must offer mail-order.
--
-Dave "Novalis" Turner
GPL Compliance Engineer
Free Software Foundation
--- End Message ---
