Re: Request for help wording exception clause

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Ben Armstrong <synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca>

> While this new mxDateTime is not yet (or may never be) in Debian, the
> software I am writing may find its way onto non-Debian systems.
> Therefore, to ensure that others do not have licensing problems with my
> software and this later mxDateTime, I understand I need to grant users a
> specific exception to "linking" my software (which is written in Python)
> to this non-GPL-compatible Python library.

> So in summary, I do not know how to word such an exception so that it
> will be legally sound.  Please advise.

We had some threads about similar problems back in 1999. The eventual
solution went something like:

| This program is free software; you can redistribute if and/or
| modify it under the terms of tht GNU General Public License
| yadda yadda yadda standard GPL blurb yadda yadda yadda
|
| As a special extension, you may link this software with XForms
| (Copyright (C) by T.C. Zhao and Mark Overmars) and distribute the
| resulting binary, under the restrictions in clause 3 of the GPL,
| even though the resulting binary is not, as a whole, covered by the
| GPL.  (You also need to make sure you comply with licence of
| XForms, of course).  If a derivative no longer requires XForms, you
| may use the unsupplemented GPL as its license by deleting this
| paragraph and therefore removing this exemption for XForms.

Now substitute "mxDateTime" for "XForms" and replace the
"(Copyright..." parentheses with something else that identifies
the stuff you want to make people able to link into the program.

-- 
Henning Makholm                             "We're trying to get it into the
                                parts per billion range, but no luck still."