On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 01:24:31PM +0200, Grzegorz Prokopski wrote: > W li?cie z ?ro, 07-08-2002, godz. 10:58, Mark O'Donohue pisze: > > Grzegorz Prokopski wrote: > > >A friend of mine reminded me lately, that libreadline is GPL not LGPL > > >library so it can only be used in GPL-compatible software. > > >However AFAIK GPL is incompatible with MPL type licenses like IPL > > Sure sounds a good idea to get it checked out, I know that it's a > > debatable topic on readline, particularly since it's in a shared > > library, and we don't redistribute readline with our binaries, since > > it's already included in linux. > > Now - I've had a bit of a further read, and from what I've read, it's > > probably ok for me to build and to distribute my stuff, since I don't > > distribute readline as well, but apparently the debate seems to be if > > there is a conflict for debian to ship both readline and firebird together. > I am afraid you're violating GPL this way. It doesn't matter if you > distribute this lib or not. The fact is that you use lib's headers > and use lib itself (while compiling and then linking the program). > You could say so if you could compile FireBird having NO libreadline > on disk (for ex. with some stub lib only and own headers). > But you can't (ATM). > Even then (if you could) - the user using such FireBird would be > violating GPL, as he would effectively link GPL-incompatible program > to GPLed library (he won't be able and/or will not want to use empty, > stub lib). Users do not violate the GPL: the GPL does not govern use of a program. But it would be illegal for Debian to *ship* a version of FireBird that uses libreadline. That is, if all you need are your private headers and stub library, that's fine -- as long as that's what FireBird uses by default when installed. If FireBird ships with a Depends: libreadlinex, then clearly we are linking against libreadline. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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