Re: [Libguestfs] Hivex licensing question
Hello Richard,
It's a bit strange that this flag [--lgpl] controls two different
things:
controlling whether to import the module according to the license, AND
adding a header to the imported source file.
It's not strange, it's necessary for consistency. If a package is LGPL,
it wants only modules that are compatible with LGPL packaging, and it wants
LGPL headers in the source files.
> "The header is updated automatically when you import the
file into your
> project, assuming you invoke gnulib-tool with the option --lgpl or
> --lgpl=2."
>
> Is this a solution Hivex can use?
It's a good idea, but unfortunately because we are using one GPL
module[1] we can't use that flag because then gnulib-tool would refuse
to run.
[1] across the whole package, not in the library.
In this case, I will soon recommend to run gnulib-tool twice, once for the
library, with --lgpl flag, and once for the rest of the package, without
--lgpl flag and an option that indicates the other checkout. (This option
has recently been suggested by Sam and Gary, but is not yet implemented.
Therefore "soon".)
This will make it easier for packagers who analyze the license of the package.
If there is a module that is GPLed and that _looks_ like it might be used
by an LGPLed library, this is enough to confuse the people who do the
license bookkeeping. It is easier if one directory has only source code with
LGPL header, and another directory has only source code with GPL header.
Each of the directories can contain source code from gnulib, but that
requires two gnulib-tool invocations.
Bruno