Thanks for the reply and the link. Reasonably informative, but unfortunately not as definitive as one would like. What a mess. Makes me really appreciate the permissive licenses. No headaches. :) I was just curious if that was an option. Fortunately I believe I have alternatives to what I was looking to do. So I can avoid it all together. Someone posted a view by the Racket developers on their understanding of their choice of the LGPL for Racket. It seems that they are switching to MIT/Apache for Racket 7, the next version. They had all contributors sign agreements to the relicensing. https://github.com/racket/racket/issues/1570 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/racket-dev/FiBLEZ-fmn8/8uLTbNamEwAJ Again thanks for the lesson and help. Jimmie On 10/02/2017 01:47 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe wrote:
On 2 Oct 2017, at 19:45, Jimmie Houchin <jlhouchin@gmail.com> wrote:
Back on topic.
To my understanding, if I should port anything GPL licensed that I needed from some language to a C library and licensed it GPL. Then I called my new GPL C library via UFFI. I should have no problems at all. Is that a correct understanding by all?
Does this look like a good approach for most anyone in the Pharo community if they desire to port and use GPL software? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Libraries
There are different opinions, but I seem to clearly remember the GNU ReadLine case: even though it is a library that you can link to, using it is only allowed by other GPL programs.
Thanks.
Jimmie
On 09/15/2017 03:49 PM, Jimmie Houchin wrote:
Hello,
Pharo 7 to my understanding fundamentally changes Pharo. It is my understanding that Pharo 7 starts with a core Pharo kernel and like many languages out there, imports or adds code from a variety of external sources to the image being built.
With that understanding, I am curious if that would allow for inclusion of a specific library/module to be licensed as GPL? And it not affect the other code in the composed image?
I am a big believer in the MIT/BSD license and not a big fan of the GPL. However, there is software out there that I have avoided looking at the source code or attempting to port it to Pharo because it is GPL. I would sincerely love if I could now port such a library and license it under the GPL as required, and it not affect any other code outside of that specific library.
I am not a lawyer. Nor do I know any lawyers. Is is possible for someone to get a reasonably definitive answer on this question?
I am sure I am not the only one who has had this desire. I am also sure that I am not the only one who will have this question in the future. So it would be nice to have a proper legal response that could possibly be explicitly stated somewhere on the website or on an FAQ or something.
Regardless of the answer, yes or no. It does need to be a settled issue for Pharo. That way someone could know if GPL/LGPL or whatever software could be in the catalog.
Just wanted to put that out there to the community. I look forward to the answer, should one be or become available.
Thanks.
Jimmie