On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 06:51:11PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
libguestfs (an LGPLv2+ library) uses the 'hash' module, which turns out to be "GPL".
Actually this happened because we started to use it in a separate GPL'd utility program, but later on included this functionality in the core library, copying the same code from the utility but not checking the license of 'hash'.
We'd therefore like to request that 'hash' is relicensed as LGPLv2+. If this is not possible, we will have to rewrite the code, probably implementing our own hash table, which would be a shame because hash works well for our needs.
Notes:
- the code doesn't appear to call exit (it does call abort), and so seems to be suitable for a library
- hash-pjw which we also use is already licensed as LGPLv2+
- it looks like the original author was Jim Meyering (CC'd)
- the dependencies are all LGPLv2+
I'm going to write (or find) a new hash implementation for libguestfs really soon. Is there any final chance this will be relicensed? Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting, bindings from many languages. http://libguestfs.org