Re: (L)GPLv3

[Christian Persch <chpe gnome org>]

Hi;

> > The problem is not only with third-party apps that use the platform.
> > There are also some significant GPLv2 only libraries that GNOME apps
> > may want to use. As examples, Poppler and ClamAV come to my mind.
> 
> Incidentally, this is one of the major reasons that GNU PDF was made a
> high priority project by the FSF: besides implementing a broader
> subset of PDF, but to have it be LGPLvN+. Currently N is 3 for GNU
> PDF, but also currently I hear poppler does a better job at what it
> does.

I can't be the only one who was excited about discovering there's a
LGPL3+ pdf library out there! I work a bit on evince, and I had never
heard about it. However, the excitement was brief, and terminated by
actually checking out the code...

Also, it seems libgnupdf is GPL3+, not *L*GPL.

I was pointed to mupdf [http://mupdf.com/] which is GPL3+ and seems a
bit further along, but not quite as good a poppler; also it's not
using cairo (it has its own drawing system, and apparently no cairo
impl of it exists so far)...

> Still, given that GLib is not breaking ABI, it doesn't seem that
> LGPLv3+ is an option for it. We should however (IMO) promote GPLv3+
> for applications, where possible.

With my GNOME maintainer hat on, I already switched aisleriot to GPL3+
some time ago, and plan to do the same with my other app modules soon.

Regards,
	Christian