From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1HmxDJ-0003o0-Gf for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sat, 12 May 2007 19:25:09 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.14.0/8.14.0) with SMTP id l4CJOEb4000677; Sat, 12 May 2007 19:24:14 GMT Received: from mercury.easily.co.uk (mercury.easily.co.uk [212.53.64.51]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.14.0/8.14.0) with ESMTP id l4CJMK31030865 for ; Sat, 12 May 2007 19:22:20 GMT Received: from [86.129.77.13] (account w8ss0jn4va48 HELO c1358217.kevquinn.com) by mercury.easily.co.uk (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.0.6) with ESMTP id 217456521 for gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org; Sat, 12 May 2007 20:20:38 +0100 Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 21:24:54 +0200 From: "Kevin F. Quinn" To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Eigen and GPL-2 exception - is a new licence required? Message-ID: <20070512212454.36156f1c@c1358217.kevquinn.com> In-Reply-To: <200705121242.03449.cryos@gentoo.org> References: <200705121242.03449.cryos@gentoo.org> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 2.9.1 (GTK+ 2.10.9; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary=Sig_tN5yQuxSZQv9FRm.F8OaL_h; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=PGP-SHA1 X-Archives-Salt: 8359d354-4261-4dcd-9e5d-36031ce6905d X-Archives-Hash: 7aeb97dc603f59de52f73fa42db67088 --Sig_tN5yQuxSZQv9FRm.F8OaL_h Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, 12 May 2007 12:41:58 +0100 "Marcus D. Hanwell" wrote: > There is a template library called Eigen I would like to add to the > tree. It is a dependency of an application I would like to add > shortly. It will also end up being a dependency of KDE 4 (for > kalzium). My question relates to the licence the code is released > under. >=20 > It is licenced under the GNU GPL, version 2 or later with the > following exception, This is a common situation with GPL compilers - some are licensed so that they can be used to build non-GPL software, some can only be used to build GPL software. The situation with Eigen is similar to the "libgcc exception" for GCC. We don't mention that in the LICENSE for gcc. This is the exception that allows you to build non-GPL software with gcc (note for the interested - if you build profiled executables with gcc, the GPL applies to the built executable since the profile support code linked into the executable is licensed purely under the GPL - not a real problem as no-one distributes profiled executables!). However there's also a similar exception for gnat-gcc; that has a separate license file GMGPL which explains the situation there. However this is talking about extra libgcc stuff that is Ada-specific - the standard libgcc exception is not mentioned. For information, gnat-gpl (the AdaCore-sponsored version) doesn't have the exception, so is straight GPL - this also means you can't use gnat-gpl to build and distribute BSD-licensed software, for example. So currently we're inconsistent. We must be accurate in our license declarations, I think, so my view is if Eigen has a license that is GPL with some exception, that should be made clear. All these exceptions are doing the same thing - relaxing the GPL as it applies to the compiler (or template library in this case), so that it does not apply to works created using it. I like the "GPL-2-with-linking-exception" license name that the gnu-classpath package uses; perhaps we could include (concatenate) all the exception clauses that lead to the same thing into that license file and have the relevant packages use that license name. --=20 Kevin F. Quinn --Sig_tN5yQuxSZQv9FRm.F8OaL_h Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=signature.asc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGRhSK9G2S8dekcG0RAs6AAKDZLEJxv85uiHoQWgFB/HjdIbcdmACfffNC B3oCGWdsG6mBYiR9CCu55B0= =+bQ+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Sig_tN5yQuxSZQv9FRm.F8OaL_h-- -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list