On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 10:03:05AM -0800, Yandell, Henri wrote: > We¹re looking into using Hivex and came across something odd. While > the license of hivex.c is LGPL 2.1, it appears to require the GPL > 3.0 licensed gnulib package for a few minor functions ( full_read, > full_write and c_toupper ). There are also a few GPL 3.0 build > files. It has always been our intention to allow hivex to be used from both proprietary and free software, and so the library should be LGPLv2+. The standalone programs are GPLv2+, but this should not be a problem because you wouldn't link software to them. I have looked at the gnulib modules that we're using in the library (ie. lib/*) and they are: hivex c-ctype LGPLv2+ hivex full-read LGPL hivex full-write LGPL (according to .gnulib/modules/* License field which is what you should look at, *not* the comments at the top of each gnulib source file bizarrely). Therefore I think for the library we are OK. Just to complete the analysis, for the programs we are using: hivexsh c-ctype LGPLv2+ hivexsh xstrtol GPL The Makefiles are GPL, but they don't affect the library or the programs in any way. They constitute a separate program used to build the software. Rich. CC'd to Jim: This analysis is a pain, and gnulib-tool doesn't let you say "I want to use LGPL for this directory and GPL for this other directory".

Richard W.M. Jones wrote:

> The Makefiles are GPL, but they don't affect the library or the > programs in any way. They constitute a separate program used to build > the software. > > Rich. > > CC'd to Jim: This analysis is a pain, and gnulib-tool doesn't let you > say "I want to use LGPL for this directory and GPL for this other > directory". Yes, that is inconvenient. The alternative is to have two separate gnulib-style libraries, one with the lgplv2+ modules you use, and another for those additional ones that you use from gplv3 applications. But that is a lot of inconvenience for not much gain. This has been lamented and discussed/justified several times on the bug-gnulib mailing list.

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.

> "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.