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[Bug-gnulib] Re: licenses again


From: Simon Josefsson
Subject: [Bug-gnulib] Re: licenses again
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 00:59:08 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.110003 (No Gnus v0.3) Emacs/21.3.50 (gnu/linux)

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

> However, I think we should try harder to avoid splits because of GPL/LGPL.
> Your proposal would encourage rewriting for the sole reason of a different
> license. Leading to untested code, different bugs or features in each copy
> (thread-safe or not? error handler specifiable or not? etc.)

I agree.

> I don't think there are many modules that anyone will try to convert
> from GPL to LGPL. (If one takes RMS's recommendation, to limit LGPL to
> libraries, not applications, that is.) Therefore I would propose to handle it
> on a case-by-case basis:
>   a) strdup: You wrote strdup.h yourself. Can't you put it under LGPL?

But it already is.  This is what I mean by confusion about which
license various files are under...

strdup.h says it is under GPL, but according to modules/strdup it is
really LGPL.

>   b) minmax.h: I already gave you my agreement to give this away under LGPL.
>      The other author of this file is Paul Eggert. You can ask him.

Already done, thanks.

>   c) getline, getdelim: What does RMS say when you tell him that you have
>      an LGPL'ed rewrite?

I'll ask.

>   d) getpassword: It seems odd that you need this in a library. Is your
>      library not usable by GUI programs? Or is it actual application code?

That module isn't yet ready, I was just storing it there meanwhile.
And yes, it is for application (GPL) code.

Perhaps I could ask for some advice on it.  One reason for the name
change is that 'getpass' is deprecated, and some compilers and tools
complain when it is used.  Another reason is that opening /dev/tty is
a rather Unix oriented approach, and it also prevent reading passwords
from file descriptors (which CAN be secure).  Finally, the buffer
returned is restricted in size.  Altogether, this warranted the new
API.  Any suggestions on other problems/improvements?

Would you accept 'getpassword' in gnulib?  It doesn't really implement
an existing portability interface, rather it introduce new one.  I
guess xalloc.h is similar.

The code (untested, and I'm aware of one bug):

http://josefsson.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/lessergnulib/lib/getpassword.c?rev=1.1&view=auto
http://josefsson.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/lessergnulib/lib/getpassword.h?rev=1.1&view=auto

Thanks,
Simon





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