blitz library. egcs1.1 , GPL vs. LGPL

[John Lapeyre <lapeyre@physics.Arizona.EDU>]

	I installed the pre egcs1.1 g++ that Matthias advertised.  Blitz
builds and runs tests without a hitch.  (It causes the previous egcs g++
to abort)
	The source is very cleanly organized , with nice docs, and builds
beautifully under egcs. I am waiting to hear from the author about
including it in debian, because although the code is under the GPL, he is
trying to get people on his mailing list as a precondition to downloading.  
He also plans to change the license because some people have complained
that it is restrictive for commercial applications.
	I will suggest the LGPL to him, but I'm not sure I understand all
of the issues.  Correct me if I'm wrong in thinking that someone can sell
binaries that were compiled with blitz (distributed under LGPL).

	The blitz (C++) library is rather strange.  He only builds a
static lib, which contains a bit of global data.  _All_ of the routines
are in the headers.  Compilation of small example programs takes a long
time, because so much blitz code has to be compiled.  I'm not sure why it
is designed this way.


John Lapeyre <lapeyre@physics.arizona.edu>
Tucson,AZ     http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~lapeyre