Re: [Bug-gnulib] Re: getline bug?

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Bruno Haible wrote:
> Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
>
> > We have an additional clause in our license ...
>  
> Also you probably have the requirement that everything in libltdl needs to
> be as small as possible?

That isn't really an overriding concern.  For the most part I, at least,
hold maintainability (agility/flexibility, call it what you will) in the
highest regard.  Slightly below that libltdl needs to be portable to the
vast majority of relatively modern (C89) POSIXish systems.

> In gnulib we avoid bloat, but favour flexibility if the cost is low.
> (Examples are: exit_failure, xalloc_die() as a separate function, the
> delim1 and delim2 parameters of getndelim2, the support for wide characters
> in vasnprintf(), etc.)

I don't see any fundamental differences in our goals here.  The main 
issue I think, is that gnulib has thus far mainly evolved as a mechanism
for GNU applications to share code; but we are discovering that some of
gnulib is equally useful to GNU library code.

> Therefore I think, in the long run, libltdl's
> requirements and gnulib's way don't converge.

That may be the case in the end.  But since the licensing issue is being
discussed right now, it seemed like a good time to raise this query. 
Simon is suffering from the same problem, only he is happy with straight 
LGPL.

If you state outright that gnulib is inflexible in its licensing (strict
GPL, with LGPL for a subset), then I'm fine with that.  Libltdl is only
likely to make use of a handful of functions from gnulib, so rewriting
them under our license is not an unbearable overhead.

If you determine that there is some flexibility in the licensing, then 
it makes sense for us to use gnulib code that has already been tested 
and debugged, and to pay more attention to other areas we may be able
to leverage your work.

Cheers,
        Gary.
--
Gary V. Vaughan      ())_.  address@hidden,gnu.org}
Research Scientist   ( '/   http://tkd.kicks-ass.net
GNU Hacker           / )=   http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool
Technical Author   `(_~)_   http://sources.redhat.com/autobook

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