Re: Licensing issue with cvs2svn

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 04:48:37AM +0200, Michael Haggerty wrote:
> Daniel Berlin wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Michael Haggerty wrote:
> >> The problem is that Mercurial is GPLv2, and it is not clear to me
> >> that the CollabNet license is compatible with GPLv2; it seems
> >> likely that it is not.  Therefore it is at best questionable
> >> whether linking cvs2svn and Mercurial is permitted [1].
> > 
> > As long as mercurial is separately distributed from cvs2hg and it is
> > the user who is "linking", it doesn't really matter.
> 
by any means, that's quite a stretch. if i made my own import library
for a gpl'd dll so i could legally link my proprietary exe against the
dll's symbols, would that allow my users to link against that dll? i
have serious doubts about that.

> IANAL but it seems to me that writing code that imports a Python
> library is analogous to writing C code against a GPLed
> dynamically-linked library. 
>
i agree.

> The latter is very much a gray zone; the FSF claims that it is not
> allowed under GPL, whereas others think that it is.
> 
of course the fsf claims it, as it is at the very core of the gpl's
spirit. and it's the foundation of gpl/commercial dual-licensing models
such as employed by trolltech, mysql, coin3d (v2), etc..

> I guess I will ask the Mercurial copyright holder if he has any
> objections.
> 
i'm not sure such an exclusive license would be accepted by e.g.,
debian, even if the hg ppl would give it. they'd probably have to add a
general gpl exception.

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