Re: libidn re-license
* Simon Josefsson:
> Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:
>
>>>>> (GPLv2-only and LGPLv3+ are incompatible.)
>>>>
>>>> Nowadays, almost all GPLv2-only programs link to library code licensed
>>>> under the GPLv3 (with a linking exception on the library side), so we
>>>> pretend that they are, at least to some degree.
>>>
>>> How does that link exception look like?
>>
>> <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception.html>
>>
>> I don't think the exception makes the version 3 code compatible with
>> version 2.
>
> That applies only to GPLv3, doesn't it? Libidn is now GPLv2+|LGPLv3+.
Yes, and this is fine.
> I don't immediately see how that exception could be used here. I
> wouldn't want to s/GPLv3/GPLv2+|LGPLv3+/ on a document like that without
> sanity checking by some legal entity. I recall that the FSF and GCC
> folks spent a lot of time working out that document.
What I'm trying to say is this: Programs like Git already link against
libgcc, and this has to be permitted by the GPL version 2 (otherwise
we couldn't distribute them). But libgcc is GPLv3 plus another type
of linking exception, so maybe we can use the reasoning which allows
to link us against libgcc to come up with a way to link against
LGPLv3+ libraries.
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