Re: New Xconq Windows Executable

[Hans Ronne <hronne at telia dot com>]

>As far as the AS licensing is concerned, it looks like all that
>Xconq really needs to do is get written permission to bundle the
>DLL's and Tk Tcl scripts (actually the legalese refers to the
>"Package", which is a superset of what we want/need, I think). AS
>seems to be fairly OpenSource-friendly, so it might be worth a
>shot.

This restriction only applies to the package distributed by AS. I think the
main reason is that they want people to always get the latest package from
their web site. The tcl core license goes as follows:

"The authors hereby grant permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and
license this software and its documentation for any purpose, provided that
existing copyright notices are retained in all copies and that this notice
is included verbatim in any distributions. No written agreement, license,
or royalty fee is required for any of the authorized uses. Modifications to
this software may be copyrighted by their authors and need not follow the
licensing terms described here, provided that the new terms are clearly
indicated on the first page of each file where they apply."

So you are free to distribute tcltk for any purpose. You can also hack the
files and impose your own license variant. This is in effect what AS has
done. However, if you get the sources from sourceforge and build your own
DLLs, or use the binaries at sourceforge (currently available only for the
Mac) there are no restrictions on redistribution. The same applies to the
tcl script files.

Anyway, getting tcltk from AS (for Windows users) is a good idea for
several reasons. First, the AS installer makes sure that all files are put
in the right places. Second, you always get the latest version that way.
Third, tcltk is a huge package, much bigger than Xconq.

Hans