Re: [Hebmorph-thinktank] HebMorph patch

[Itamar Syn-H. <it...@co...>]

On 10/06/2011 05:27, kirillkh wrote:

> Still, some questions remain:
> 1. Are you even allowed to distribute Lucene+HebMorph+(your 
> open-source software), considering Lucene is not GPL?

 From what I came up with when initially looking into GPL a while back, 
yes. GPL allows you to use or rely on non-GPL software. It doesn't make 
sense to be allowed to code GPL only from scratch or for other GPL apps.

> 2. A normal program based on Lucene+HebMorph will use the Lucene API, 
> not the HebMorph API (I don't know Lucene's API, but I suspect there's 
> a way to configure its analyzers through the configuration files; 
> otherwise it's easy to program a Lucene extension that would do just 
> this). So one can say that the program does not link to HebMorph 
> directly - rather, it links to Lucene; furthermore, even Lucene 
> doesn't link to HebMorph directly: rather, it links to a generic 
> "Analyzer" API, which it provides itself. Does this mean that a 
> closed-source program is allowed use Lucene+HebMorph?
Incorrect. In your code you are going to have to create HebMorph objects 
(at least an analyzer). You'll be talking to HebMorph directly. I think 
you'll find the flexibility loss when using config files is too great to 
be worth it, and I honestly don't think that will work around the GPL 
issue (because now you rely on Lucene which relies on GPL software, so 
you rely on GPL).

As I said in a previous mail, the real question is whether to use a 
license with a stiffer bite, or to rely on people to act in good faith 
and remain with GPL. And I can certainly see how GPL can be enforced in 
such scenarios, especially when there's a publicly available discussion 
about exactly that.

Itamar.