On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 01:51:14PM +0100, M.-A. Lemburg wrote: > Gregor Hoffleit wrote: > > > > If somebody could give me a legal advice that the Python license is in fact > > compatible with the GPL, and if this was accepted by the guys at > > debian-legal@lists.debian.org, I would happily adopt this opinion and that > > would make (b) go away as well. > > > > Until this happens, I think the best way for Debian to handle this situation > > (clearly not perfect!) is to use a per-case judgement--if there's GPL code > > in a package, ask the author if it's okay to use it with Python2 code. If he > > says alright, go on with packaging. > > Say, what kind of clause is needed in licenses to make them explicitly > GPL-compatible without harming the license conditions in all other > cases where the GPL is not involved ?
Hmm, during the great KDE confusion (KDE was GPL, and Qt was not compatible with the GPL), it was suggested that the authors of the KDE code should add this clause to their license boiler plate (cf. http://www.debian.org/News/1998/19981008): `This program is distributed under the GNU GPL v2, with the additional permission that it may be linked against Troll Tech's Qt library, and distributed, without the GPL applying to Qt'' (By the way, even the FSF uses a similar clause in the glibc license. The glibc license is the usual pointer to the GPL plus this clause: "As a special exception, if you link this library with files compiled with a GNU compiler to produce an executable, this does not cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.") If you add something similar to your GPL code, that should work for the Python license, too. Evidently (cf. the URL above for an elaboration), the problem is that only the copyright holder of the code can add this clause. Your code with be perfectly compatible with pure GPL code, and it would be compatible with Python2 code. It would not be possible, though, to mix in some other pure GPL code, and link that with Python2 code--since the pure GPL code's license doesn't permit that. Silly, not ?? ;-) Gregor
