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The problem with Guile as it was, was that libguile was linked
against and required libreadliine, thus causing all guile-linked
programs to fall under the ordinary GPL, and thus preventing the
strategic purpose of the special Guile GPL from being achieved.
You are right, that is a serious problem. It risks leading people to
do, without even being aware of it, exactly what we are telling them
not to do. This might undermine our legal position, but even if it
doesn't do that, I think it is wrong to treat the public that way.
Jim has since added a configure-time option to not link Guile
against libreadline.
This does not really solve the problem. If a sysadmin installs Guile
without using that option, the installation of Guile on that machine
would still lead users to do something that violates our own
distribution terms, without even knowing they are doing so.
The only real solution is that Guile must not cause readline to be
linked in. There should not be an option in Guile for sysadmins to
cause this to happen to users.
It would be ok for Guile to be set up so that it can use readline if
*the user* chooses to link it into the programx. This would not
put us in the position of leading people to violate the Readline
distribution terms. This perhaps could be done by including a weak
link to a symbol in libreadline.a.