Re: [q-lang-users] License of Q programs

[Peter M. <pet...@wa...>]

Tim Haynes wrote:
> Albert Graef <Dr....@t-...> writes:
> 
>>> I wanted to ask if this is indeed the intended behaviour.
>> Not really. I think that it shouldn't be too difficult to freely use Q in
>> other open source projects (i.e., projects under some OSI-approved
>> license, is that the case with Erlang?). But IANAL so any advice is
>> appreciated. What I do know is that it's hard to augment the GPL with
>> special clauses without rendering the whole license invalid. So what do
>> other, similar projects do to handle this situation?
> 
> How about "binaries under GPL, libraries under LGPL" (or specifically
> libq)?

The Q base libs would be needed too. But the base libs and libq are 
really all that would need to be linkable to non-GPL code.

> Or a special linking exemption clause might be appropriate (say, if there's
> not complete logical separation in the sources for Q between what goes into
> bin/q and what goes into lib/libq.so). (ISTR gcc does this.)

Looking at the source code organization you have the directories libq 
and stdlib, so the external stuff seems pretty well isolated.

> Perhaps it would be worth being sure that people's own code written *in* Q
> is not a derivative work *of* Q, as well?

As I understand that's a matter of the license of the baselibs.

The thing with LGPL and GPL+exception is of course that they allow every 
license, not just open source ones. I haven't found a wording on the 
internet along the lines of "you may link this with code under other 
licenses provided that every license in the program is OSI approved".

Greetings,

Peter