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

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Heller <theller at python.net> writes:

    Thomas> I cannot uinderstand your reasoning.  How can 'info
    Thomas> autoconf' incluence the license of the aclocal.m4 file?

It doesn't.  The point is the documentation explains that all of the
other files are _part of autoconf_, and come under the license of
autoconf.  They come with special additional rights for users so that
the GPL does *not* apply to a project simply because the project uses
a configure script generated by autoconf.

The aclocal file is not part of autoconf and so doesn't come under
that license, but rather the license its author gives it.  Presumably
that is the same as the rest of the application (here libffi, since an
aclocal for libffi was almost certainly written by a libffi developer).

    Thomas> Given that all kind of *nix experts are here on this list
    Thomas> - can someone tell if aclocal.m4 is needed for building
    Thomas> libffi at all or not?

Not if libffi is distributed with a prebuilt configure script.

Otherwise, not using the distributed aclocal.m4 may be possible, but
it's a bad idea.

-- 
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