Re: Please advice w.r.t. language/tcl

[Jonathan Larmour <jifl at eCosCentric dot com>]

Andrew Lunn wrote:
>> Jim Tcl has an eCos repository in it's official CVS server. I
>> haven't tried, but it should be possible to delete Jim Tcl from eCos
>> and add the Jim Tcl eCos repository to ECOS_REPOSITORY. Jim Tcl for
>> athttpd is optional, so only anyone using Jim Tcl for athttpd, would
>> need to add Jim Tcl to ECOS_REPOSITORY.
> 
> I don't know if it is as simple as that. Since the license is
> incompatible, i guess it invalidates both licenses when you combine
> the code in an application. Maybe the FSF & GNU sites says more about
> this, but maybe you end up with an application which you have no
> license to distribute it with?

Fortunately it's better than that. The apache license only applies to "the
work of authorship, whether in Source or Object form, made available under
the License, as indicated by a copyright notice that is included in or
attached to the work"

The eCos license has our special GPL exception clause, allowing other code
to be distributed under other, even wholly proprietary, licenses.

So a combined executable is not in itself license-infringing.

But it has always been a matter of policy that eCos be GPL-compatible -
that was one of the main reasons for the move from RHEPL after all - and
this would prevent that at present.

That is, unless we do move to GPLv3. Maybe we (the maintainers) should have
that discussion. If we want to do it, it certainly wants deciding soon as
we get closer to starting concerted work on eCos 3.0. I've not been
entirely happy about GPLv3[1], but I'm only one maintainer. If everyone
else is keen on it, I would rescind my position.

Jifl
[1] Primarily for me it comes down to the anti-DRM stuff. I want to be more
liberal than that. Other reasons are the same as those here:
http://lwn.net/Articles/200422/

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