Re: Pango licensing problem?

[Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh sharif edu>]

On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Owen Taylor wrote:

> FreeType is dual licensed under GPL and the FreeType license,
> so there is no problem using it with GPL code.

No Owen, only FreeType 2 is dual licensed, but not the parts you are
including from FreeType 1. The files mentioned are explicitly only under
the FreeType license. The copyright line of 'ftxgpos.c' is 1996-2000, for
example, while FreeType project's switch to dual licensing only happened
in October 2001. I guess we need to ask the original authors to rerelease
the files under the new dual license.

> Also note that that the code in pango/opentype is only 
> ever used if you are using FreeType as well, so the fact 
> that it is under GPL/FreeType license instead of LGPL imposes 
> no additional restrictions on the person using Pango.

Again the above comments apply. Only FreeType 2 is dual licensed. So one
who's using Pango+FreeType 2 is merging LGPL stuff with FreeType stuff
with FreeType/GPL stuff. GPL cancels with the first FreeType, and you have
a LGPL+FreeType license, incompatible with GPL.

> (Yes, I need to fix the problem with the license not being
> included.)

Sure.

BTW even if I'm wrong and the opentype directory is really dual
GPL/FreeType, please mention that somewhere in the root directory. That
parts of Pango are covered by some other license than LGPL.

roozbeh