Re: Portability and more...

[Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu>]

gray@voicenet.com writes:
> 
> Lastly, I am looking at using guile within a quasi-commerical 
> application (in a tool for use by my consulting practive)
> and I was wondering if there has been any discussion about
> moving to the GL-GPL (the GNU Library General Public License)
> rather than the existing GPL?  While I am a big supporter of
> GPL (see my web site below for a GPL'd application that I 
> developed), my management isn't really keen on giving up
> the sources to this application. However, there would be
> no issues with giving back any changes made to the 
> guile libraries as stated by the license (for example, if we
> had to do the port to NT).
> 
> 

First, note that Guile has a special exception to the GPL:

 * As a special exception, the Free Software Foundation gives permission
 * for additional uses of the text contained in its release of GUILE.
 *
 * The exception is that, if you link the GUILE library with other files
 * to produce an executable, this does not by itself cause the
 * resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License.
 * Your use of that executable is in no way restricted on account of
 * linking the GUILE library code into it.
 *
 * This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why
 * the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.
 *
 * This exception applies only to the code released by the
 * Free Software Foundation under the name GUILE.  If you copy
 * code from other Free Software Foundation releases into a copy of
 * GUILE, as the General Public License permits, the exception does
 * not apply to the code that you add in this way.  To avoid misleading
 * anyone as to the status of such modified files, you must delete
 * this exception notice from them.
 *
 * If you write modifications of your own for GUILE, it is your choice
 * whether to permit this exception to apply to your modifications.
 * If you do not wish that, delete this exception notice.  */


This should satisfy proprietary needs even more than the LGPL does.

Second, when you use the tool you want to create in yur consulting
practice, will you be distributing binaries (outside of your
organization)? If not, the GPL won't force you to release source even
if you do GPL your code. In other words, if this is for internal use
only, GPL is irrelevant. If, howeverm you plan to distribute binaries
of this tool to customers, you need another license. Fortunately,
Guile allows that.

 - Maciej Stachowiak