Re: Minified javascript files

[Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>]

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 07:50:39PM +0000, Sam Morris wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:43:51 +0600, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 12:03:23PM +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> >> > So yes, we have the problem for precompiled windows DLLs in a source
> >> > package.
> >> 
> >> Interesting, that issue seems rather common.  Maybe a lintian check
> >> could alarm packagers of this?
> > http://lintian.debian.org/tags/source-contains-prebuilt-windows-
> binary.html
> 
> This includes:
> 
> tcltrf (source)
>  * win/msvcrt.dll
> 
> This is part of Windows. I don't expect Debian has been granted 
> permission to distribute it. :)
 
It's the run-time library for Microsoft Visual C++ and is, as I
recall, distributable along with applications that are built using
that compiler.  In fact, it is *recommended* to distribute it with
applications.  However, various applications bundled with Windows also
need it, so in practice you can get away without doing this if you're
sure your application doesn't depend on any newer features.

Now, distributing it *separately* from any application or other
library built with that compiler may well be copyright infringement.
But it's a long time since I had to think about this and actually
read the licence.  Anyway, I see no point in distributing the
library with source, since whatever compiler you use to build it
should come with the appropriate run-time library.

> I wonder how many of these DLLs and EXEs link together code licensed 
> under the GPL with versions of the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime that does 
> not ship with Windows (and hence qualify for the 'major parts of the 
> operating system' exception)?

I don't believe any licence is required for dynamically linking some
program to a library that implements a standard interface that the
program was already written for.

Anyway, GPLv3 explicitly exempts run-time libraries from source
requirements (clause 1 paragraph 3).

Ben.

> «i686-w64-mingw32-objdump -p foo.dll | grep 'DLL Name'» will output a 
> list of dependant DLLs. The bad ones to look for match at least «msvc[pr]
> [0-9]+.dll» or «mfc[0-9]+.dll» (case-insensitively). I'd do this myself, 
> but I don't have the hard drive space nor the bandwidth here, sorry.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
                                                              - Albert Camus