Re: Intent to package xmemos
Richard Braakman wrote:
> KELEMEN Peter wrote:
> > On Sat, 1999-03-27 23:24:31 -0800, Darren O. Benham wrote:
> >
> > > Legally, you can not distribute GPL software that's been linked to
> > > xforms. To include it in Debian, it has to be compiled against fltk.
> > > If it won't compile, it has to go the way of KDE.
> >
> > XWatch is a similar program. [...]
>
> This is indeed a bug. I've just filed it against xwatch. Thanks
> for pointing it out.
Now I know where the xwatch bug report comes from. Here's what I
replied to Richard:
The program falls under the same conditions as Lyx (also GPL'ed)
which is why I didn't persue a license change. After following a
related discussion on -devel in October (archive/latest/15697), I
concluded that the GPL conflict applies only to software not
originally developed under a non-free library (e.g. say the KDE
team takes ghostview and write kghostview linked against Qt; that
would be against the GPL unless they get permission from the
ghostview authors). Since the author initially designed xwatch
to work with xforms, I concluded that there was no conflict. The
author agreed.
I would be happy to clarify the license if you could provide a
paragraph to add to it, stating that linking to libforms is
allowed. Since you posted the bug report, perhaps you already
have in mind a statement that would satisfy you. The upstream
author has given me permission to do whatever I felt was
required with the package, including changing the license.
Any comments from the legal crowd? Any standard add-on XForms
packages can add to the GPL? BTW, The Lyx license is _still_ GPL
you know...
Peter Galbraith <psg@debian.org>
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