Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] Introduction and general question

[Ulrich Klauer]

Tony Theodore <address@hidden>:

> We try to avoid licensing threads [1,2], but sensible defaults for  
> mxe are [3]:
> 1) don't make the developer run into unexpected licensing issues
> 2) make the packages as feature complete as possible

> The hypothetical "developer" in this case is following the spirit of  
> the DFSG[4]/FSF[5]/OSD[6], so unexpected would be "non-free"  
> packages (eg. faac[7]). For sox in mxe, I'd say we enable everything  
> that's "free" since it's much easier to disable something downstream  
> than enable it.

I read those threads you linked to. The argument is convincing that  
MXE is used to create statically linked executables, so that it is  
normal that LGPL code has to be promoted to GPL.

> > There is support in libsox for dlopen()ing optional libraries at >  
> runtime. This is what we do for the "official" SoX Windows binary: >  
> libmad, opencore-amr, and lame are left out, but if the user has a >  
> relevant DLL, they can use it.
> That sounds like a very good solution for final distribution - it  
> would be interesting to see what it looks like. Is it just a matter  
> of excluding those packages? The ffmpeg package has some configure  
> options like --enable-gpl (along with a page of notes[8]), does sox  
> have something similar?

No, there is only a text file saying which optional libraries are  
under which licences. There is nothing non-free used by SoX; it can at  
most become GPL version 3 (excluding use with GPLv2-only code).  
Perhaps it is a good idea (for upstream) to let configure output a  
message when optional libraries cause a narrowing of licence options.

What I referred to is configure options like "--enable-amrnb  
--enable-dl-amrnb". This will make the program/library aware of AMR-NB  
from the opencore-amr package, but the code won't be linked in.  
Instead, it will try at runtime to open a DLL that the user may have.

> >  I could set up the MXE sox package in this way, too, if that is desired.
> We'd probably keep the full set enabled in mxe

I'll submit a merge request enabling everything that is possible.

Ulrich