[Bug-gnulib] Re: licenses again

[Simon Josefsson]

How about this?

This aims to set a policy that lib/ include code that is licensed
under both GPL and LGPL.  It also add a new directory, lgpl/, that is
only intended for LGPL rewrites of a GPL copy in lib/.  The intention
is that GPL and LGPL modules are added, as today, into lib/.  Further,
the few modules that are rewritten because the GPL version cannot be
relicensed as LGPL, are added into lgpl/.

The rationale is that doing what the current README text says (i.e.,
split LGPL and GPL completely) will create lots of moving of current
files, and that would break CVS history, for no (to me) obvious gain.

There is a LGPL version (and thread safe version) of getline/getdelim
in lessergnulib, it would be an example of what could go into lgpl/
(if I had actually tested the rewrite).

I think that gnulib-tool should always prefer the GPL version, unless
--license=lgpl is used.

I don't know what to do for modules/m4 files.  It seems those files
can share the same modules/m4 directories, but the LGPL versions can
be prefixed with 'lgpl-'.  As in modules/lgpl-getline or
m4/lgpl-getline.m4.  This would also be easy to make use of
programmatically in gnulib-tool.  I.e., iff --license=lgpl is used,
then prefer module/lgpl-$MODULE over module/$MODULE.

Thanks,
Simon

Index: README
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/gnulib/gnulib/README,v
retrieving revision 1.11
diff -u -p -u -w -r1.11 README
--- README      28 Sep 2004 15:02:50 -0000      1.11
+++ README      28 Sep 2004 15:14:11 -0000
@@ -10,8 +10,10 @@ be achieved at a low cost.  This collect
 
 There are three directories that contain all of the files:
 
-gpl/   - Any source files licensed under the GNU General Public License
-lgpl/  - Any source files licensed under the GNU Lesser GPL
+lib/   - Any source files licensed under the GNU General Public License
+         or the GNU Lesser General Public License
+lgpl/  - Any source files licensed under the GNU Lesser GPL, but for
+         which a GPL implementation exists in lib/.
 doc/   - Any documents that may be nice to have in applications.  This
 includes such files as 'COPYING, COPYING.LIB, etc.'