On Fri, 31 May 2013, Josh Triplett wrote:
> On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 06:44:00PM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > Upstream has changed the license to GPLv3. It has an additional
> > permission to negate any "viral effects", but it only applies to
> > packages that include a configuration script generated by GNU
> > autoconf.
> [...]
> > Here is the new license text for config.sub and config.guess:
> [...]
> > As a special exception to the GNU General Public License, if you
> > distribute this file as part of a program that contains a
> > configuration script generated by Autoconf, you may include it under
> > the same distribution terms that you use for the rest of that
> > program. This Exception is an additional permission under section 7
> > of the GNU General Public License, version 3 ("GPLv3").
>
> Interesting choice of wording. Read literally ("generated by
Indeed.
> Autoconf"), this would mean that the exception only applies when you
> distribute config.guess or config.sub as part of a source distribution
> that includes the generated configure, not just the input configure.ac.
> Which should be the case for most source distributions, but it still
> seems interesting.
>
> And on the flip side, you could also trivially satisfy this by including
> a generated configure script that doesn't actually get used.
Yes. It is not exactly an watertight wording.
I expect this license might be further updated to correct these points,
it is not like we don't have to update config.sub/guess at least once an
year...
So I advise people to stick to the obvious intention behind the license
change, which is that GNU config is to be used by GPLv3 packages and
also by packages that use GNU autoconf/automake regardless of their
license.
> In any case, this seems like something we could easily scan for with
> lintian or with any of the automatic whole-archive source scanning
> tools: just look for a source package that contains config.sub or
> config.guess but does *not* contain a configure script (or whose
> configure script does not contain "Generated by GNU Autoconf" in its
> first few lines).
I will file a bug report with upstream to the effect that the license
should allow distribution under a different license in any case where
GNU autoconf or GNU automake is used, even if the configuration scripts
have not been generated yet.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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