Re: Dia plugins and C++ (fwd)

[Alan Horkan <horkana tcd ie>]

Suggestion 1
relicense some of the plugin code LGPL or at least allow some sort
of a glorified exec() plugin or other clean interface (Bonobo?) that would
not require the use of GPL.
I realise it may be impossible to find all the coders let alone get them
to agree to LGPL the plugin interface code.

Suggestion 2
try to arrange some explicit agreement so that programs such as Kivio,
Open Office, and others are granted an exception to share and reuse dia
shapes.
I would really like to see greater interoperability and consistancy and i
think this might encourage that.

And thanks Cyrille for the clarification (see below)
Sincerely
Alan


Le Thu, May 02, 2002, à 11:13:31PM +0100, Alan Horkan a écrit:
> what i was trying to get at was that if the templates are GPL and the
> resulting documents are made up primarily of those templates rearragned
> then what license does the documents i produce using dia fall under?

To be able to make this happen without ill side-effects (like those you
mention), there is usually an exception (sometimes nicknamed the "compiler
exception") which precisely allows this.

OTOH, we don't include the shapes themselves in the document; a document
really is a set of statements "place this shape/this object at this place,
with this size and with these attributes". Which of course belongs to
whomever wrote that document, and of course does not fall under the GPL
unless the author of the document specifically wants it to do so.

If we go the Kivio way, which is to optionally include the shapes into the
document, and after re-reading the GPL text, it really seem we ought to
explicitely exclude the shapes from the scope of the GPL (either by putting
them in the public domain, or by granting a specific exemption).  Of course,
not doing either would render that (still hypothetical) shape inclusion
feature useless (and dangerous, since I don't think anyone would prosecute
in case of "trespassing", which in turn would only weaken the GPL)

        -- Cyrille

-- 
Grumpf.