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Re: Bug#596511: ITP: simon -- Open source speech recognition



 Hi!

Am 2010-09-21 16:39, schrieb Simon Josefsson:
Is Julius dynamically linked to Simon?  I wonder whether GPLv2 is
compatible with the Julius license.
Yes it is. The simon license contains a special exception to allow this.
This is also covered here:
http://www.simon-listens.org/wiki/index.php/Licensing
It refers to 'under certain conditions as described in each individual
source file' but I cannot find conditions described in any of a random
sample I made of source code files in Simon?  Can you point to one file
that has the conditions?  All source code files that are built into a
package linked to Julius needs to have the exception, I believe,
otherwise the file is under the GPLv2+ only without the exception.
You are right, I forgot that exception but added it to the two files of the one class coming in direct contact with Julius (it's used somewhere else too but there it just calls external programs).


Also, any external GPL code that Simon links to needs to have the same
exception.  Is there any external GPL code?
Well of course - KDE.

This is getting ridiculously frustrating. It's not that I don't think it's an important issue but I guess if you'd gather all involved parties and ask them if the current setup would be ok I am pretty sure everyone would agree. Oh well I guess that just comes with the territory.

I obviously can't hack this into simon 0.3.0 but for the next version, would it help if I split the Julius-interfacing part into a plugin that doesn't link to KDE? This would be the easiest option in my opinion but as I understand it it would mean to distribute the plugin seperately?

If Julius is not "free" in Debian eyes this would mean that simon becomes pretty much useless to be honest.

Regards,
Peter


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