Re: License of m4/ltoptions.m4

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Paul" == Paul Eggert <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

 Paul> As a special exception to the GNU General Public License, if you
 Paul> distribute this file as part of a package that uses the file as input
 Paul> to GNU Autoconf, GNU Automake, or GNU Libtool, then you may distribute
 Paul> the resulting output files under the same terms that you use for the
 Paul> rest of the package.

I don't understand the intent of "as input to GNU Autoconf, GNU
Automake, or GNU Libtool".  AFAICT Libtool does not input m4
files, only the Autoconf tools and aclocal do.

I assume "input to GNU Automake" means read by "aclocal to
produce aclocal.m4".  If so this text seems to imply that you
can distribute aclocal.m4 (with an embedded copy of python.m4)
under your licensing term only if you also distribute python.m4
(which is under GPL).

But there is another case which I'd like to support: the case where
python.m4 is distributed aside to aclocal.m4, and aclocal.m4 simply
does m4_include([m4/python.m4]).  Then python.m4 is not a resulting
output file of aclocal.  And still we'd like to relax the GPL.



  As a special exception to the GNU General Public License, if
  you distribute this file as part of a package that uses the
  file (or any derived output) as input to generate its
  configuration script with Autoconf, then you may distribute
  the file and resulting output files under the same terms that
  you use for the rest of the package.


"configuration script generated by Autoconf" is what the aux
scripts already use.

"or any derived output" is a lame attempt to allow tools such as
aclocal (without singling out aclocal) to preprocess the file,
as long as the intent is to build a configure script.  

-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz