Re: readline to gnuplot.exe (console mode) for windows

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

On Sunday 21 February 2010, Tatsuro MATSUOKA wrote:
> Hello Tait and Ethan
> 
> 
> --- Ethan Merritt wrote:
> 
> > On Sunday 21 February 2010, Tait wrote:
> > > 
> > > No complaint if you want to do this privately, but for distribution, are
> > > we allowed to link against readline?
> > 
> > Good point.  I had momentarily forgotten that the windows version would
> > be provided as a binary image rather than as source.
> > 
> > > Gnuplot is not GPL-licensed (and
> > > personally I prefer it that way), and as I just became aware the other
> > > day, it's apparently the FSF's position that linking against readline is
> > > NOT allowed from non-GPLv3 applications.
> > 
> > I happen to disagree with them about that. I do not believe that linking
> > to an optional external dynamic library by itself creates a derived work,
> > hence the GPL restrictions are not relevant.  But it's a fight we don't
> > need to pick, so let's not. 
> > 
> > 	Ethan
> > 
> 
> Thank you for point the licensing issue about the GPL.
> 
> That is not related to only to the readline  and serioys problem for binary distribution for windows
> related one.
> 
> Pango, freetype, and libiconv are under the GPL (but version is 2nd not GPL v3).

It is a little bit different from that.

readline is GPL  "General Public License"

pango and libiconv are LGPL    "Lesser General Public License"  
                        a.k.a. "Library General Public License"

see http://svn.gnome.org/svn/pango/trunk/README
    http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/

The extra "L" is important.  It means that you are explicitly
allowed to link to it from software using a different license.

freetype has its own license, but it is essentially BSD, which
means there are no restrictions about linking to it.  It is also
possible to obtain freetype under a GPL-compatible license if you
need one, but that is not the case for gnuplot.

see http://freetype.sourceforge.net/license.html


So linking to pango, freetype, and libiconv is not a problem.

	Ethan


> For wxt terminal, the mingw libraries are linked. And it does not work without mingwm10.dll.
> 
> The libiconv perhaps is be able not to use it.  Others are hard to remove them.
> 
> 
> If the binaries link with the GPL software cannot be allowed, we cannot distribute any windows
> binaries with recent and new features (the cairo related terminal and the wxt terminal).  The people
> would like to use these feature, they have to build the gnuplot by themselves. 
> 
> I have read the GPL licence (Sorry I have read the GPL v2 because I cannot figure out the
> corresponding part in the GPL v3).  The license of libraries are different from the that of the GPL'ed
> software itself.
> 
> The cygwin binaries that shipped on the gnuplot site (and also on my site) seems to have been linked
> with the libreadline.
> 
> Perhaps the license issue is very important.  I think that more discussions are required but not
> simply stop to link with GPL'ed libraries.  
> 
> Regards
> 
> Tatsuro
> 
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