Re: [Stellarium-pubdevel] Possible issue with distributing the MSVC runtime library and the GPL

[Georg Z. <geo...@un...>]

Hi!

Stellarium is widely used also esp. in educational institutions. I am
afraid XP will stay on many computers there a while longer (1-3 years, or
until they rot away?). Given recent additions: landscapes, comet tails,
observability, ... (I must have missed a few, sorry!), I vote for at least
having two final builds for XP: 0.13 32bit OpenGL and ANGLE (Or does ANGLE
need Win7?). Or at least, MinGW build with OpenGL and the optional MESA
library. MinGW/Qt5.2 works fine on my XP-SP3.
Most of the build system is now configured for multiple setups, or not?
(what about the plugins?) What are the current obstacles (QtDeclarative,
...), and where are we at the moment in removing them?

If license is against packing MSVC libs, there should be a check and
download link from M$ or at least a note "You must download <URL> ...".

Just my 2 cents. Sorry, like most others I have almost zero time these weeks.

Best regards,
Georg


On Mo, 31.03.2014, 14:38, Fabien Chéreau wrote:
> Just for info, qt5+ does not support Windows XP anyway.. So I don't really
> see a problem with dropping support completely.
> Fabien
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Bogdan Marinov
> <dag...@gm...>wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Bogdan Marinov
>> <dag...@gm...>wrote:
>>
>>> Hello.
>>>
>>> At the moment, the Windows installer for 0.13 includes "msvc*.dll" (see
>>> CMakeLists.txt). Including these libraries in a distribution package
>>> presented as GPL may be a violation of the GPL.
>>>
>>> See the GPL FAQ:
>>> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WindowsRuntimeAndGPL
>>>
>>> You may not distribute these libraries in compiled DLL form with the
>>>> program. To prevent unscrupulous distributors from trying to use the
>>>> System
>>>> Library exception as a loophole, the GPL says that libraries can only
>>>> qualify as System Libraries as long as they're not distributed with
>>>> the
>>>> program itself. If you distribute the DLLs with the program, they
>>>> won't be
>>>> eligible for this exception anymore; then the only way to comply with
>>>> the
>>>> GPL would be to provide their source code, which you are unable to do.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think that they are referring to this part of section 3 of GPL v2:
>>>
>>> However, as a
>>>> special exception, the source code distributed need not include
>>>> anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
>>>> form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
>>>> operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
>>>> itself accompanies the executable.
>>>>
>>>
>>> AFAIK, VC redistributable files need to be installed only on Windows
>>> XP,
>>> as later versions of Windows include some of them by default.
>>>
>>> I'll try to look more into this issue. A possible solution is to have
>>> two
>>> versions on Windows, one MinGW/OpenGL for those with newer graphics
>>> cards/OSes, one MSVC/ANGLE that requires additional installation of
>>> DirectX
>>> and/or the VC redistributables. I think that the installer can be made
>>> to
>>> check for those libraries.
>>>
>>
>> I sent this almost two weeks ago. No reaction? My next step will be to
>> remove the necessary lines from the InnoSetup script.
>>
>> Bogdan
>>