How does the license of an M4 autoconf macro affect a software license?
Hi,
the game Battle of Wesnoth contained in Debian is licensed under GPL v2+.
Now a dependence on the Boost libraries (www.boost.org) was added
and the configure script missed a test for it. So I integrated (see
https://gna.org/bugs/?10419) the file boost.m4 from
http://repo.or.cz/w/boost.m4.git which is licensed under GPL v3+ into
the build system (I these macros from configure.ac).
Now the question: Could the different license versions cause problems?
Can Wesnoth still be shipped as GPL v2+ or not?
I would also like to know the following (as the author is willing to
relicense boost.m4 if necessary to the Boost license):
If a possible non-free software which uses Boost would start using
boost.m4 in their build environment, is it necessary to relicense the
whole software under GPL v3+?
I searched the web for quite some time and couldn't find an explicit
answer except:
According to GPL v2 the build system belongs to the source code of
software but is the integration and usage of M4 macros a modified work?
Since I mentioned that some autoconf macros contain a GPL exception
I have doubts about compatibility and Eric S. Raymond asked me to
resolve it so please help ...
Thanks,
Jens
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