Re: Just some ideas

[Gleef <gleef capital net>]

On Tue, 16 Jun 1998, Todd Graham Lewis wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Jun 1998, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> 
> > > Has anyone considered using ldap?  Or at least providing support to
> > > it?  It would give access to an already defined and extensible
> > > directory architecture that is on its way to becomming an internet
> > > standard.
> > 
> > Apparently a lot of people want to see LDAP support for various GNOME
> > tools, it would be worth investing some time researching this. 
> 
> I for one think it would be very valuable.
> 
> > Do we
> > have free client code for LDAP? 
> 
> Netscape is pushing their LDAP client code very strongly.  It has the
> wacky free Netscape license, which is open-source but which does not
> interact well with the GPL.  It is the best one out there, bar none.
> 
> Miguel, it'd probably be your call as to whether we should use it.

By my reading of the NPL, it allows for small pieces of Netscape code
(eg. the LDAP section) to be redistributed under other licenses, as long
as the copyright stays in place.  This would work fine for our purposes.

The trouble between NPL and GPL comes when you try to put GPL code into
the NPL source tree.  NPL insists that copyright be assigned, and the
licence be changed, GPL won't allow this.

Even if careful reading by others yields a different conclusion, the
intent of Netscape is clearly to allow for code reuse, and they hold the
copyright to the whole Netscape code tree.  If we want it under a
different license, all we would have to do is ask for a special license
for the code we want.

-Gleef