[Python-Dev] DRAFT: python-dev Summary for 2006-01-01 through 2006-01-15

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 26-jan-2006, at 18:04, James Y Knight wrote:

>
> On Jan 26, 2006, at 7:29 AM, Thomas Heller wrote:
>>> And licenses are fluid, it may be a piece of cake to
>>> get one of those 'tools' un-GPL'ed, even if they are.
>>
>> I wouldn't even know whom to ask.
>
>
> On Jan 26, 2006, at 9:22 AM, Ronald Oussoren wrote:
>> It shouldn't be too hard to use Python's main configure script to  
>> calculate
>> the information necessary to build libffi. A lot of it is already  
>> calculated
>> anyway (sizeof various type, endianness), some can be hardcoded  
>> (FFI_NO_RAW_API).
>>
>> In PyObjC I just compile the files I need from my setup.py. But I  
>> have an easy task,
>> I just need to support two CPU architectures on one OS.
>
> Let's please be sure the license isn't fine _as is_ before thinking  
> about asking people to change them or rewriting the build system! I  
> did not look at *all* the files listed as being GPL, but the first  
> two in the list were not.

Merging the two configure files might be a good idea anyway, that  
would take away the need to run configure from setup.py. IANAL, but I  
don't quite get how a GPL'd support script, if there is such a thing,  
in the build machinery of an extension library would require that  
Python itself is GPL'd.

Anyhow, in my copy of libffi (a snapshot where the last entry in the  
Changelog is from 2004-04-26) the only the following files at the  
toplevel op
libffi are GPL licensed: config.guess, config.sub,  config-ml.in,  
ltcf-c.sh, ltconfig, ltmain.sh, missing. All of these contain an  
exception clause like this one in config.guess:

# As a special exception to the GNU General Public License, if you
# distribute this file as part of a program that contains a
# configuration script generated by Autoconf, you may include it under
# the same distribution terms that you use for the rest of that program.

I'd say that it should be save to include these in the Python  
distribution.

Ronald

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