Re: Gnome Pilot license

[Erik Bågfors <bagfors pdc kth se>]

On Tue, Nov 16, 1999 at 01:11:56PM +0100, Eskil Heyn Olsen wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, JP Rosevear wrote:
> 
> > > gnome-pilot code. In general, no conduits except for GPL'ed may link with
> > > gnome-pilot, that sort of sucks.
> > Have the MALsync people been asked if they will GPL or LGPL their code
> > yet?
> 
> I notified them of this some months ago, when they first approached me
> reg. a gnome-pilot conduit. I got no reply then. I am now again trying to
> get a hold of them.
> 
> But someday it might be something other then 
> 
> Btw, is this moot, since gnome-libs is GPL'ed, having a xPL on gnome-pilot
> would be "illegal", or is GPL/LGPL compatible (can they be ? Won't that
> let people link non-GPL code with GPL'ed code via a LGPL layer ?)
> 
> license issues suck.
> 

Is this a question??  

If I understand it correctly here is an answer :)

GPL, MPL, NPL, foobar-license, and any other licence out there can be linked 
together with LGPL.

GPL on the other hand cannot be linked with MPL and alot of other licences 
that breaks the GPL.

So...

Using LGPL for the gnome-pilot-libraries and GPL for the rest of 
gnome-pilot is legal.


 ---------------    -----------------
 | gnome-pilot |    | malsync-code  |
 | GPL         |    | MPL           |
 ---------------    -----------------
             |       |
	     |       |
	     |       |
       -------------------------
       | gnome-pilot-libraries |
       | LGPL                  |
       -------------------------

This is leagal.

As long as no MPL code is linked with any GPL-code you are ok.  One way
to do this is to tag each file with what licence it is using and making
sure no MPL-tagged-file is linked with any GPL-tagged-file.

Is you choose to distribute gnome-pilot, the libraries and the 
malsync-conduit together you have three licences in that distribution.  
That is a mess.

Another way to go is to get the avantgo-people to release malsync under 
GPL or LGPL.  I think they could acctualy use both licences (don't ask me
how that can work :) )

The easiest way to go is to release all of gnome-pilot under LGPL.
Some people might not think that is good but I kindof like it :)


/Erik 
-- 
Erik Bågfors               | http://www.acc.umu.se/~bagfors/
Email: bagfors@pdc.kth.se  | Center for Parallel Computers
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