On Wed, 30 Aug 2000 Joern.Hartroth_at_comma-soft.com wrote:

> I'd like to second Janne's comment. If you continue to believe that the
> MPL captures your intentions best - and from your sketch of the merits of
> MPL vs. GPL and BSD's licensing scheme I can well believe that this is
> the case - then stick to it.

I don't want to be stubborn or go against what everyone else wants, that's
why I need to ventilate this problem with you my friends.

I need to feel I have people behind me in this. There's no point in standing
up for my personal beliefs if that'll make me stand alone when the wind is
blowing.

So, I appriciate the supporting comments. I need them.

> Maybe the GPL compatibility issue can be resolved through appropriate
> packaging of a complete libcurl distribution inside the other package?

No. GPL explicitely forbids distribution with a package like curl. There's in
fact only one way to do this and that is to add a section to the GPL license
text for the particular package that wants to distribute libcurl in the same
package. That suggested "added section" is found in the curl FAQ and is based
on the wording Richard Stallman, RMS, (I expect everyone to know who he is)
suggested for GPL software that wants to include Qt libraries.

> Otherwise I'd say that libcurl can be found and downloaded easily enough
> from the curl website, so that distributing it separately from other
> projects is just a minor nuisance.

Yes. There's also nothing that prevents curl or libcurl to be repackaged and
distributed in other forms that could increase the comfort even more. I can't
say how, just that if anyone would come up with a smarter packaging, nothing
would stop him/her.

> P.S.: You have my blessing to put any of my minuscule contributions to
> curl that may have survived until today under any of the mentioned public
> licenses.

Thank you.

PS
 Bjorn Reese (rather well oriented in license issues such as this) is now on
the case and together with Ragnar Kjørstad (who actually started this new
license debate) and me. We're working on the problem and we hope to find a
way that will please all of us. The legal implications are very tricky and
getting responses back from RMS is slowing the process slightly! ;-)

RMS claims MPL "imposes further restrictions" on GPL without specifying in
detail what those restrictions are. The Mozilla people seem to say it is so
because RMS says so...

-- 
      Daniel Stenberg - http://daniel.haxx.se - +46-705-44 31 77
   ech`echo xiun|tr nu oc|sed 'sx\([sx]\)\([xoi]\)xo un\2\1 is xg'`ol