[adding bug-gnulib] On 06/18/2010 05:46 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 01:39:27PM +0200, Andrew Beekhof wrote: >> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Eric Blake <ebl...@redhat.com> wrote: >> I think we just need to be careful about what modules we use, >> otherwise we become gplv3+ by default right? > > There is a configuration option for bootstrap that tells it to restrict > modules to those satisfying a particular license. eg, in bootstrap.conf > you can add > > gnulib_tool_option_extras="--gpl=2"
Right now, gnulib does not support GPLv2. Or, put another way, some gnulib modules are under LGPL (whether version 2 or version 3 depends on the module), but all remaining modules under the GPL assume that GPLv3+ is good enough, since it tends to be final executables and not libraries that will be using GPL. Since you won't be linking a final executable into another product, you might as well use the latest and greatest license - the primary use case for LGPL instead of GPL is so that others can link in your library without affecting their licensing. Gnulib DOES provide --lgpl=2 (limit to modules that are LGPLv2+ only) and --lgpl=3 (limit to modules that are LGPLv2+ or LGPLv3+ only). I'm not sure whether it is okay to link an LGPLv3+ library into a GPLv2+ app, but you are certainly safe sticking with --lgpl=2 if you choose not to upgrade to GPLv3+. But if you have a good use case for adding gnulib-tool --gpl=2, to keep your app at GPLv2+ rather than upgrading to the latest and greatest, it is probably something that gnulib can accommodate. It's just that we need a bit more explanation why you think sticking to GPLv2+ is in your best interest. > > and it'll now refuse to pull in gplv3 modules. We use this in libvirt to > restrict it even further, to only lgplv2+ modules True, but libvirt is a library specifically released under LGPLv2+, while, if I understand correctly, matahari is an executable currently released under GPLv2+. And while we are at this, it would be nice to patch gnulib/users.txt to list matahari as another client - welcome aboard! -- Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com +1-801-349-2682 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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