Re: [MiNT] MiNTLib and GPL/BSD copyright

["Guido Flohr" <gufl0000@stud.uni-sb.de>]

Hi!

On Fri, May 07, 1999 at 01:54:15AM +0200, Michael Schwingen wrote:
> On Wed, May 05, 1999 at 07:29:37PM +0200, Guido Flohr wrote:
> > BTW, an alternative would be to split up the library into a "free for
> > commercial use" and an "open source policy" part.  As long as you follow
> > open source policy you could even merge these libraries into one but in
> > any case it would require quite some work and care for both the maintainer
> > and the user of the library.
> 
> That might be a good idea anyway.

But it would make life harder for the user that casually compiles code
without being a sophisticated programmer.  I would actually prefer to
impose the extra work on the back of those that want to make money with
the lib.
 
> I am not sure if you can put GPL'd and non-GPL'd code in the same library,
> without affecting each other in a legal sense, so the cleanest solution
> would be to keep them separate.

The GPL allows that and the MiNTLib does this merging for a long time
already.  The problem with this mixture is that a lot of people
unintentionally link against code that they are not allowed to use for
commercial software (I already mentioned that _doprnt - the base routine
for all printf stuff - is BSD copyrighted) without credits, or even in a
way that infringes the copyright.

A really clean solution would be to maintain a database which knows about
the licensing of all modules.  Another table in that database (created at
library build time) would then contain a list of the symbols that are
defined in the various modules and after compiling your application you
could retrieve a list of the copyrights you have to obey.

Imperfect in many ways and I rather write something more productive than
such a stupid thing.  I still think that it is up to the commercial
library user to take care that all copyright conditions are met.

Ciao

Guido
-- 
http://stud.uni-sb.de/~gufl0000
mailto:gufl0000@stud.uni-sb.de