Re: license change of futimens was incomplete

[Bruno Haible]

Eric Blake wrote:
> LGPL, or LGPLv2+?

LGPL. No one has asked for an LGPLv2+ copy of the 'futimens' nor 'utimens'
modules.

> I know we were reluctant to relicense openat and friends for a while,
> because the fallback could abort (which is never safe for a library).

I disagree: It is OK for a library to call 'abort ()'. abort () means that
the developer made a mistake, and that mistake needs to be reported to them.
abort () is the best means to do that, because it provides a stack trace
and even, on some platforms (those with 'apport'), sends a core dump to
the developer.

In gnulib the following LGPL modules contain calls to abort ():

acl-permissions
areadlink
array-list
array-oset
astrxfrm
avltree-list
avltree-oset
avltreehash-list
carray-list
euidaccess
fcntl
fd-hook
fma
fmod
freadahead
freadptr
freadseek
fseterr
fts
hash
i-ring
iconv
imaxdiv
linkedhash-list
mbrtowc
mbscasestr
mbssep
mbsstr
obstack
perror
popen
random
rbtree-list
rbtree-oset
rbtreehash-list
regex
rename
rint
setlocale
sigaction
sigprocmask
strerror
strerror_r-posix
striconv
striconveh
strtod
sublist
tempname
tsearch
uname
vasnprintf
version-etc
wctob
xstrtol

And glibc contains tons of abort () calls as well.

> But I'm okay with my contributions, whether to LGPL or even the looser
> LGPLv2+.

Thanks.

Bruno
--
In memoriam Marie Antoinette <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette>