Re: vis5d license

["Steven G. Johnson" <stevenj@alum.mit.edu>]

I wrote:
>"As a special exception to the terms of the GNU General Public License,
>Vis5d may be linked with the LUI library included with Vis5d, which is
>licensed for distribution with Vis5d by Stellar Computer, Inc."

Speaking of which, it is probably a good idea to include a similar
exception for McIDAS, which is a proprietary library for SGIs, Suns, and a
couple of other machines, that Vis5d can optionally be linked with.  (In
contrast, libraries like OpenGL fall under the "system library" exception
clause of the GPL and require no special permission.)

I think I also wrote the above exception too quickly.  It needs to give you
permission to redistribute the resulting binary as well as to link.
(Whether distributing the unlinked source code is a GPL violation is a
matter of interpretation, but it's probably safest to just give explicit
permission.)  Can someone suggest a better wording (maybe some other
project has already dealt with a similar issue)?

Cordially,
Steven G. Johnson