Re: Automake (alpha) release request

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 18 Dec 2007, Russ Allbery wrote:
> This wouldn't be doing any favors for non-FSF projects that use Autoconf
> and Automake, particularly given that such huge changes in licensing are
> rather not what anyone would expect without a major version change.

Right.

> Indeed, the configure and Makefile.in files generated by such an Autoconf
> and Automake release may actually be illegal to distribute for many
> non-FSF projects.  I can think of several of mine just off the top of my
> head that would have that problem, due to m4 macros or other content that
> is covered by a GPL-incompatible license (usually for historical reasons
> that are nigh-impossible to change due to the impossibility of contacting
> all past contributors).

There is also the little issue of the generated configure.h, which 
contains text copied verbatim from autoconf, automake, and libtool. 
It becomes part of the C source code for an application.

Without the license exceptions, there are probably 1000 open source 
projects which would be dead in the water since they do not use the 
GPL v3 license.  Even projects which are GPL but have chosen to stick 
with GPL v2 could be at risk.

The significance of this issue to the open source community should not 
be under-stated.  There is no reason to believe that the FSF will 
change its mind about non-GPLed projects using autotools but the final 
proof will be in the license exception text which is generated.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/