Re: [hatari-devel] The IPF license

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Hi,

On lauantai 21 joulukuu 2013, Thomas Huth wrote:
> Nicolas and I had a discussion this week, that we likely need an
> exemption to our Hatari license statement, since the IPF library
> license constrains the distribution of the software to non-profit
> usage.
> So I've added now some wording to our license statement to clarify that
> we allow linking Hatari against the IPF library:
> 
>  http://hg.tuxfamily.org/mercurialroot/hatari/hatari/diff/36bc5c4cc8b0/re
> adme.txt
> 
> Note that this of course does not change the license of Hatari itself,
> we continue with GPL v2, it's just that you also have to take care of
> the IPF license when you link against that library and want to
> distribute the results. (And before somebody asks: Yes, the GPL
> allows such exemptions, something similar is for example also needed if
> you want to link an GPLed program against the OpenSSL library, see
> https://people.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html for details)
> 
> Since adding such an exemption is a major change anyway, I'd like to
> ask all here who contributed to Hatari whether this change is OK for
> everybody. Please read through the exemption carefully and provide your
> feedback and concerns!

I'm OK, with the intent, but the added text is a bit unclear.  In private,
people can combine Hatari with whatever they want to, copyright concerns
only copying/distribution of the combined work.

I would also clarify what kind of modifications are OK for IPF.


I would change the new text thus:

> In addition, as a special exception, the copyright holders of Hatari give 
you
> permission to combine Hatari with free software programs or libraries that 
are

-> ...give permission to copy/distribute Hatari combined with...

> released under the GNU LGPL and with code included in the standard release
> of the IPF support library (a.k.a. libcapsimage, see 
http://www.softpres.org/
> for more information) under the Software Preservation Society Licence 
Agreement
> as it has been defined for IPF library version 4.2 (linking against 
modified
> versions of the library is also allowed as long as the license did not 
change).

-> ...as it has been defined for IPF library version 4.2.  Linking against
modified versions of the IPF library is also allowed, as long as neither
the license, nor purpose of the library (accessing special format disk
images), was changed.


Question: should we add exception for any freeware disk image library,
regardless of whether it has advertizing clause (like AROS and other
old BSD license based ones have) or requires non-profit distribution?

Or should we wait until there's support for next disk format?


	- Eero



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