Re: RFC: proposed GPLv3 license exception draft

[Eric Blake]

Ralf Wildenhues <Ralf.Wildenhues <at> gmx.de> writes:

> We hope that this new exception will help make Autoconf's licensing a
> little more clear and robust -- if also a little more verbose -- in the
> same way that GPLv3 has done for the entire free software community.  We
> are interested in hearing feedback from Autoconf developers about
> whether there might be intended good uses of the software that are not
> covered by this exception

This text needs to be modified to account for autotest, and perhaps also for 
autoupdate/autoscan/autoheader.

> "Eligible Output Material" is Covered Code that is included in the
> standard, minimally verbose, non-debugging and non-tracing output of the
> version of Autoconf distributed to you under this License.  Moreover,
> "Eligible Output Material" may be comprised only of Covered Code that (a)
> must necessarily appear in Autoconf-generated configure scripts and (b) is
> required for those configure scripts to function.

Autotest output should be in the same category as configure scripts - the 
intent is that a package can distribute and autotest-based testsuite regardless 
of the package's license.  However, the above definition, by specifically 
mentioning only 'configure scripts', inadvertantly excludes Autotest output.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how best to alter the wording to make it explicit 
that testsuites generated by autom4te --language=autotest are intended to be on 
the same footing as configure scripts generated by autom4te --language=autoconf.

Likewise, the output of autoupdate is a configure.ac file, rather than a 
configure script.  Does that mean that if a package runs autoupdate that they 
must then license configure.ac under GPLv3, or are they still free to license 
configure.ac under a license of their choice?  Or can we argue that since the 
output of autoupdate is an intermediate file (configure.ac) which in turn is 
used to create the final distributed file (configure), that the output of 
autoscan is already covered by the existing definition of Eligible Output 
Material, and that the license used for configure.ac is not impacted by the use 
of autoupdate?

Similar to autoupdate, the output of autoscan is a configure.ac file, and the 
output of autoheader is a config.h file, both of which include text copied from 
the Covered Code.  Can we argue that these usages are part of the correct 
functioning of a configure script, and thus already covered, or do we need to 
improve the definition?




Now, for an unrelated question on procedure.  How should we go about placing 
the final approved exception text into autoconf source files?  Must the entire 
text of the exception occur in every file, or are we permitted to create a new 
file COPYING.AUTOCONF alongside COPYING, and for every file where the exception 
applies, have a shorter paragraph referring to the central file?  I'm looking 
at how gcc recently created COPYING.RUNTIME for their exception clause, and 
wondering if the resulting header for each autoconf file requiring the 
exception should look like:

# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
# any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# Under Section 7 of GPL version 3, you are granted additional
# permissions described in the Autoconf Exception, version 1.0,
# as published by the Free Software Foundation.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.


I'm also assuming that the final version of the exception text (which I'm 
proposing to place in COPYING.AUTOCONF) will receive mention on 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/exceptions.html, alongside the GCC Runtime 
exception.

-- 
Eric Blake